Will It Blend viral video star Tom Dickson has turned an everyday product into a global YouTube sensation | #388

Tom Dickson:

Thanks. Yes. That’s one of the things I haven’t  planned yet. That’s an Iphone 5.

Tim Reid:

Get that in the blender right now. I reckon there’s two conversations here. There’s the fun one and there’s the serious one. The fun one is about Will It Blend. The serious one is about the whole BlendTec, how BlendTec came to be. I’m going to give you the choice which one would you like to blend first.

Tom Dickson:

Oh it doesn’t matter.

Tim Reid:

It doesn’t matter.  All right! I know how much our listeners wanted to learn about Will It Blend. So I’m going to do that second. Now Tom, BlendTec is your company. How did BlendTec come to be? I understand it involved a vacuum and some weight.

Tom Dickson:

Wow. It’s going way back. Yes in fact and I can go back before that if you wish.

Anyhow. Well I actually started in pharmaceuticals and I developed I made the first motion sickness part cisco me patch four hours of pharmaceuticals in 1971. And in March of 71 and so that was the first patch anyone ever made. And also the only inner uterine device that’s been on the market for the last 40 years when the tatum to copper seven dark she allowed those other devices were taken off the market. The only one that stayed on was the progestins shirt and that’s because it had just drown in it. So a day and a half’s worth of oral hormone lasted for two years and the uterus so started pharmaceuticals and then I ran some wheat to my wife’s vacuum cleaner. And I was starting a wheat packaging company on the side ran away to a vacuum cleaner blew it out into a pillowcase and it came out all broken up which is not what I wanted but I felt like that’s pretty interesting. If I could do if I could make a weak grinder a weak meal with a ten dollar motor instead of a hundred fifty dollars motor that would be a major breakthrough. In the end turning another grains into flower and so then my heart was involved in and I ran it through a dozen times and every time I went to the vacuum cleaner got finer. And dirtier. So that led to the development of the kitchen. Now with a noncontact crew running twenty eight thousand r.p.m. vacuum cleaner mahrer and I’m so over 50 million dollars worth of those over the years.

Tim Reid:

So, Tom, you buy trade an engineer who just loved to tinker and every now and then came across something that you thought would change the world.

Tom Dickson:

That’s correct. Always doing crazy things and always putting big engines and little cars and like I said like a corvette engineer in austin healey. Yeah. And I know I probably built the first schifter car back in the 60s with with a Honda twin 250 twin 350 kids on a go cart with a force beat.

Tim Reid:

So, really interesting dichotomy because you’re the kind of this engineering guy this inventor you’re now a CEO. You’re clearly a marketer and you’ve got these acting abilities. So that’s an interesting dichotomy. Do you find that hard to manage or do you slip into each persona easily or is it always Tom Dixon?

Tom Dickson:

It’s always Tom Dickson. I’m A.D.H.D and I’m dyslexic so I joined new school. I could hardly read. And to this day I have trouble. I mean I can read backwards as well as forward. And this year I got a goofy mind and I get off the subject very easily.

Tim Reid:

Well it’s my job to keep you on the subject would tell me  A.D.H.D. When were you diagnosed with that? Well actually when were you labelled with that?

Tom Dickson:

Well I didn’t have the label until recently of course having having 35 grandchildren and 11 children I can see it manifest itself. And so my kids and I learned more watching them and I can diagnose it in them faster.

Tim Reid:

Did it change anything for you? Did it matter?

Tom Dickson:

Oh it’s a blessing!

Tim Reid:

Yeah.

Tom Dickson:

It’s absolute blessing because I think of things that I see things like nobody in the world sees things.

Tim Reid:

Give me an example.

Tom Dickson:

Just looking at a problem or looking at a drawing you’re looking at I just have vision eyes. I just I’m way outside the box and my feet. And so I come up with ideas and things that nobody else really. And even with my engineers we have 30 engineers. But I’ll explain something and they kind of scratch their head like or what are you talking about. And I dried up I put it drawn on a whiteboard and then they roll out white board into the engineering department they started to through it there right on it on a big desk. That’s all glass on top and they start coming up with ideas and then they’ll improve their ideas that I have and they’ll understand and sometimes I actually have to go and build it and demonstrate it and they’re all now we understand self’s size. They see things other people don’t.

Tim Reid:

There’s a certain type of person that you need following you with a big broom and just to understand where’s Tom coming from to almost like a translator.

Tom Dickson:

Yes exactly.

Tim Reid:

Is that person someone you’ve had with you for a long time? Do you have lots of them? Is it a really important criteria for employing people at BlendTec?

Tom Dickson:

No! I think that dicaprio who has a PHD in psychology who is looking in my door right now I just walked up and he’s got in his hand a piece of paper and rolled up and he’s looking to the door looking at me like who are you talking to. And he’s a university professor and teacher’s memory. And so on the university level in psychology. But he understands me very well and I known and we used to ride motorcycles together triumph motorcycles together when we were in high school and I used to race motorcycles so that’s how I grew up and he kind of followed me and he’s been with me ever since so he’s kind of that he understands me well and he kicks me under the table if I say something too bad.

Tim Reid:

So Blendtec is born. For our listeners just to put some numbers around the Blendtec business today so we know what we’re talking about sort of turnover number of staff product range. Give us a sense of quantity.

Tom Dickson:

We have 300 employees were on acre’s within and 270,000 square feet. And so we have a lot of space where 90% our blenders and our dispensers and so on 90% made here in the USA and even our even with the help of our Aussie friends we were able to perfect that board and now we build it in the most automated circuit board factory in the world right in our building. And so same with motors and we do our own injection moulding. So we do as much as we can here in the USA.

Tim Reid:

Made in the USA as a statement. As a marketing statement is really important to the Blendtec brand. Kind of an obvious question but, why?

Tom Dickson:

I think that we’re prep. Number one is the quality. Nobody has a higher quality blender or appliance than we do. And of course no other blender will do the crazy things I do and that is Will it Blends. I mean there’s blender. They’re all designed the break. You know what a coupling or a socket clutch. And we just can make it a blend or tougher and tougher. So wouldn’t break. And as you see in Australia and some of your smoothie shops and coffee shops in and scoop shops because it’s indestructible. And that helps in USA because we made it in our own building because we can control everything the hardness of the sockets are as hard as ball bearings and everybody else is made out of plastic. And Motors and our jars we mould we go all the way from we have four silos that hold 100,000 pounds of racemes and we go right from there into dryers right into injection machines and nobody even temperatures all the way your printing still this is done all bearings and American made blades and everything else.

Tim Reid:

I can’t help but think like clearly the savings of getting it done. And I’m not a manufacturing guy Tom so you know put me up here but all I know is that Apple design in California and make and manufacture in China. And from what I hear the quality of what is coming out of China these days is pretty damn high. I’m guessing that the cost savings would also be high if you went to China or similar country. So obviously those cost savings don’t outweigh heavy your own backyard.

Tom Dickson:

Well actually we can build a jar and in most of our blender we can build the entire blend of the whole assembly joran everything for less money than we can build it in China. Well it’s a very small labour component because we’re going to be building jars in blenders forever so we can afford to automate where the Chinese and in the past we’ve done things in China. We find that we can produce product much higher quality than on Mexico. And you also do it for less money. And so we automate. I’m an engineer. Like I say we’re 30 engineers we figure out how to automate things. We have robots we have the highest quality of any appliance in the world right.

Tim Reid:

Tom, they must have been a point in time where you thought hah this is getting big. This is turning into a hugely successful company. Can you remember that moment?

Tom Dickson:

No. I guess when Will It Blend thing hit and our sales went up a thousand percent I think maybe that was kind of a tipping point.

Tim Reid:

Wow. So what from the first time you posted a Will It Blend video?

Tom Dickson:

Yeah I think that I really realized after the weekend that was kind of I didn’t understand that.

That was seven years ago in October and my marketing guy came to me and said hey. And he was new and he we don’t put money into marketing. We put our money into manufacturing and engine and that’s the problem we keep. I thought that if we were in Starbucks and jobs and all these major outfits all over the world these venues that people would see our products demonstrated know that they’re the most reliable ones in the world and be a path to our door to buy product for their home. And that wasn’t quite true but we kept building better and better equipment and people really weren’t aware of it.  And then, I finally hired a marketing guy George right and he came to me and said hey you saw blending some two by twos or whatever try to break the blender. So he’s asked was he doing it anyway. And so he came to me and said What’s my budget and I said you’re the budget. I said how about 50 bucks. And I said OK. So I bought a rotisserie chicken a six pack of coke and some marbles and a rake handle a bunch of stuff. And he said hey let me video with a handheld camera let me video you blend in some of this stuff. So we filmed some videos and he came to me about five days later and he said hey time we hit a home run we have 6 million views on YouTube.

Tim Reid:

Six days later.

Tom Dickson:

Yeah. And I have five days later and six million views and I said he said the hour we had. We had a home run on YouTube And I said YouTube? Now I know that there are all this celebrity I guess they call me.

Tim Reid:

Did the right fellow the right. Amazingly he was right he lived up to his name. Did he seek permission to put those on YouTube? Let’s talk about will it blend. I have a few more questions about Blendtec but hey we’ll come back to that because I know listeners are desperately wanting to hear about Will It Blend. And one of the things with Will It Blend, Tom, it’s such a big idea from a marketing point of view. It’s a big idea. It’s an obvious idea. It’s also a very brave idea. Did the marketing fellow seek permission to put them on YouTube or did he just go and do it?

Tom Dickson:

I think he did initially just to show our own employees which we probably had 100 oversaw 150 of at the time just to show him how tough our blender was just to document some of the things that we’re doing in house and then I guess it dawned on him and a couple other people wow put this up on this new venue in this new youtube thing and so anyhow the rest is history and now we’re the number one viral marketing according to at age in the world. And there’s I think 38 book just came out that talks a marketing book that talks about the phenomenon that this thing really is and what it’s done for sales and so on.

Tim Reid:

So, Will It Blend listeners for those who are kind of going. What are you talking about. Tom BlendTec post videos on YouTube on a regular basis with Tom Blends anything. Tom you can kind of describe better than me. Do I wrap some numbers around that. Tell us what you blended.

Tom Dickson:

There’s about 125 videos something like that. We have about 500 million views so a half a billion views both on YouTube, our own site and other places. And with those 125 videos, I think the most popular one has been the iPod which has about 60 views an iPhone 3 I think has 12 or 13 million views. Just recently we did a a galaxy a blender and galaxy in an iphone 5 together which was kind of fun in a week. We had 5 million views on that. So we find that some of the more popular items especially when you’re comparing one with another you get a lot more a lot of. But some of them are pretty boring. But still will get 100,000 views on those and then we do occasionally and our fans don’t like this but people like Olympus and The Camera Folks and Nike and Ford and Fritos and Doritos and people like that will pay us a nice sum of money to feature their products I mean introducing the new Ford Fiesta and things like that and then sometimes our people really love it. Other times they say wow you’ve sold your soul we can tell you’re getting paid for this. And but we’re going to unsubscribe. But we have a half a million subscribers so every time we put a video up a half a million people goes right to their e-mail.

Tim Reid:

What’s your favourite one and why?

Tom Dickson:

Everyone is glowsticks.

Tim Reid:

Yeah that was fun.

Tom Dickson:

My wife shows up with these then I said I don’t think so. She also showed up with a hockey packs and that was it. So I said there’s no way I can blend those. But any other glow sticks are fine now I think mainly if you’re right at the very end. I blend them. And turn the lights off and I hold the jar up I said wow here’s a 12 hour lanterne and then I go I can pour it down my throat and my body turns into our tent and my throat says don’t drink. And so that’s my favourite line and video guy came up with all that stuff.

Tim Reid:

Tom, I showed my sons Will It Blend on the weekend. And one of them looked at me too. He’s 14 years old. He said; Dad, did that actually sell more blenders. Office? Obviously it does. And clearly it’s a massive awareness campaign. I mean it’s put you guys on the global map not just of Blender’s but a viral marketing and of a whole host of kind of different things. But how do you measure a Will It Blend video and what is the kind of line between putting the video out and selling a blender.

Tom Dickson:

When we started, Tim it’s just these kids they’re average maybe 16 year old or something like that. And now of course here we are. Now kids are our 23 but the whole demographic is shifted so I have people approach me that are in their 40’s that say oh you know we show your videos to our kids. And so at first what was the good thing that would happen is they’d walk into a store like a kiosk or something or doing a demonstration and kids would say Hey mom look at this or Dad. This is actually a blender. This this guy he blends I phones. This is so cool. It’s the most powerful Blender in the world and on and on. And we found that about one out of three of those will actually buy the blenders because their parents trust the kids when it comes to techno stuff. And now it’s gone. So it’s you know when the demographic average was like 26 and 36 and so now we have people that are much older that are realizing wow this got to be a tough blender to be able. I mean if it went all the other and of a sudden there’s jockey there are green smoothies and so on.

Tim Reid:

And is it your primary marketing strategy.

Tom Dickson:

Ye it is. And it just keeps going on. And even in some of these stores we’ll show Will It Blends and that just happens to be a product that lends itself to destruction. You go to destroy things and people like that.

Tim Reid:

Tom, when you filmed them and what’s the average cost of an episode of them?

Tom Dickson:

Well it really costs us nothing because we’ve now grown to the point where. We have two full time video people and then we have people a lot of times we’re doing a video for somebody else so I actually write a script. And for us and a couple hours to put one together and then our videographer does the producer does the editing and we send it and go back and forth until we get it just right. But the music with it. And so but its done right in our building. We are on our second set and in the next few weeks we are building our third set so there’s punnet it costs very little to do this and. In fact, we make money because we get credit a nice large sum of money we can get  views that that nobody else can get. Even these big even the big folks.

Tim Reid:

So, when you say give it a large sum of money you get the sales but is there do you run Google Adwords ads on the YouTube channel as well that generate an advertising revenue?

Tom Dickson:

Yes we have a great crew we put up a recipe every Thursday we have bloggers we have quite a few get on our Facebook and Twitter and were into Pinterest. I mean you know keep up on all this stuff. So we have some of these young people that are just unbelievable in understanding what gets people’s attention. And so we have a lot of people  that are tweeting about us. And weI just gave away I told about how Vida makes our main competitor stole 10 years ago copied to our wild side jar which was very they have always had to use a plunger to cram stuff down into the blade. Martially and nine years ago I think it was they copied our jar exactly. And so we want to major we want a twenty four point one five million dollar judgment against them for wilful infringement. And and so that. So I celebrated a few weeks ago by giving away a million dollars worth of these jars to our customers. So the title of that Will It Blend is silly Vita- Mix and its based on a commercial here. Low kids commercial but silly Vitamix makes plunger’s. And then I turn around and I say we don’t need a plunger and I blend the plunger. And we gave away and this went. This went viral in a couple of days. We gave away a million dollars worth of jars. Thats a hundred thousand jars went out went viral. So we do like that and it gets people’s attention. People are watching on our on our website and we just a lot of fun and these young guys put these things together.

Tim Reid:

Have you ever thought of blending a vitamix jar?

Tom Dickson:

It’s a little big.

Tim Reid:

What hasn’t been blender hockey puck.

Tom Dickson:

The hockey puck just went fine. But it sure smelled bad. Thats one of the worst things I’ve ever smelled. It was not good. And you’ll see in the next few weeks, we’re going to put up some more things where we’re blending and sharing how our competitors products fail. And so that’ll be fun because people say well why don’t you use another blender. And so you’ll see why we don’t use another blender now destroy several blenders and in doing that and it will also the number one requested thing is bland and another blendtec blender.

Tim Reid:

When does coming out?

Tom Dickson:

We might have a little surprise coming up in our next week or so. It is the end of the world. The Mayan calendar. So that’s the thing we make go up with Will It Blend in a couple of weeks.

Tim Reid:

Oh! I like that one. What Will It Blend done for Tom Dickson’s personal brand. Clearly it puts you on the map to. What are some of the things that have kind of come your way as a result of being the star of Will It Blend?

Tom Dickson:

Well, it’s the thing that we could be busy every single day and on public appearances and with my wife and I travel all over the world and whether we’re in Europe or China or South America or whatever. I mean this year already we’re in an Arctic Chile and Brazil and everywhere in between. And then of course Australia and New Zealand. My favourite places by the way and in fact and my wife is on the other 90 mile beach and on the west coast of New Zealand and I was in a rental car. My wife was with me the last time I was there and I hit ahead 200 kilometres an hour heading south with the wind behind me and 180 kilometres an hour heading north on me on a 90 mile beach. But I still got I’m 66 years old. But I just restarted a lotus. Size on a Sebring racetrack in Florida and that I have a schifter I have go carts that are very fast and and my kids  we have motorcycles and four wheelers and so we have a lot of fun.

Tim Reid:

Just love to finish up just a couple of questions about BlendTec listeners I’m talking to Tom Dickson by the way who is CEO of BlendTec and the star of the Will It Blend dot com video series which is potentially world’s best product demonstration series you’ll ever see. Tom, you touched on innovation. I’ve previously interviewed Phil McKinney on this show who’s come up with this whole innovation concept called Killer innovations and Phil was previously the vice president of innovation at hewlett-packard. So quite an interesting innovation. You talked about the glass top table that your engineers and scribble on but what’s the innovation process look like at BlendTec?

Tom Dickson:

Well you know anybody can come up with we know that the people of the world might have and then we try to solve that. But usually we’re kind of ahead of the curve and we sense things that people need. I mean one of the latest things we did as a twister jar and we call it and in 20 to 40 to 50 seconds you put any kind of knots in it. Almonds or cashews or whatever and in 40 to 50 seconds you have warm smooth not better and nothing else can do that. There was a real need for that as well as Hamas and things like that. So we just work with it and work. We see a problem and we just solve the problem like the Twister portière said it on the table it could roll off on a floor. So we put a little bumps on it so it doesn’t roll. We just work together and it’s a very tight group and we’re doing an aesop which is where we’re giving the company away. I’m giving the company away. And so eventually they will own it. And so they’re very dedicated because they they’ve got part interest in this company every one of them.

Tim Reid:

So just tell me. So that innovation process just going back to it because it is interesting so you identify problems so first of all you’re listening to your customers you clearly a lot of email, post, phone calls, you’re probably doing research groups you’ve got to meet the ground in identifying problems and issues. Customers have. Number one.

Tom Dickson:

That’s exactly right. I mean people say they want something easy to clean. I mean timing of the essence. They want something fast. OK so our blenders or tripi course nobody else is over to peak horsepower. And so we have very a lot of power. We invented the first program Blender’s so go slow and speeds up. You see that discovery channel’s things done articles on this but we just we want to get the job done fast. We want to be able to clean things fast and we solve problems like for example people want a real decent smoothie in a store and you look at what McDonald’s is doing. Our bag a blender. Fifteen years ago the first one that they used and we we give them our technology and so now there’s two other companies that make the blenders that are in McDonald’s. But meanwhile, 15 years ago or 10 years ago and we obsoleted that not that six years ago we obsoleted that technology that they wanted. We built this self serve dispenser. So you just it’s right next to pop machines. It makes us sound Paradise and it blends are real smoothie right next to where the machines are. So those are things that we’re so far ahead of anybody else so we’re always thinking and it’s in our blood.

Tim Reid:

What’s the process? because I often find talking to businesses is one of the problems with innovation is no one knows how to share an idea. I think what I find is everyone in businesses has ideas to varying degrees about that business but often it’s hard to share an idea what’s the sharing idea process like a Blendtec?

Tom Dickson:

Well just talking. Then having enough projects that you just noodle on something you think about it. People always think. And then you get together again and talk about and say hey look what I came up with and you look at other people’s products and you just work together to solve it. And you do a whole bunch of prototypes and you ask people’s opinions and you just open with your communication and we’re just a big family here and we make things happen real fast. We just cut right to the chase and a lot of people I mean everybody’s got an idea I get calls almost every day where people say hey what do you think of this. And most ideas are pretty bad or they don’t have the whole process coming up with the financing coming up with the marketing I mean is there really a need. What’s the potential market you know. And that’s how profitable is this going to be. Is there how much is it going to cost to make. And just all these questions but there’s so many ideas that are bad. There’s so many people are out there that are just preying on these people that they think they have an idea. These inventor companies is this. Oh yeah we can take your product to market nerds it’s going to take your money and and go with it because it’s a bad idea and they’re afraid to tell you that.

Tim Reid:

Many companies when they get to the success level of success. Tom Blendtec has attempted to brand extend go into other areas that they’re just not good at but they’ve got enough money in the bank that they think why don’t we try something new. Have you been tempted to do that?

Tom Dickson:

Yes a lot. And it’s really risky to get out of your comfort zone and to start some other ideas you come across someone it’s a real good sales person and they try to sell you on some idea. But you need to stick with what you’re good at. And don’t you know at the same time there’s some peripheral things that might fit into what you’re doing but try not to jump all over the place. And they get off in the areas that you don’t belong. You got to be very passionate about what you’re doing and and beyond passionate. You’re never going to succeed and you gotta have help. You got to have friends you got to have a wife or at least some significant other that has a lot of interest in you not go into the tubes.

Tim Reid:

It’s a great story, Tom. What’s the hardest thing you find about running BlendTec? The most challenging.

Tom Dickson:

At this juncture, just an occasion. But I think I’ve got so much help now that entrepreneurs start out they just want to keep going and they become. In most cases they become as the one to be the president the CEO and. They just can’t do it. There might be innovative but they can’t run a company. And so I think it’s very important for people to realize when it’s time to cut loose and find somebody that you can trust to run the company. And so I’ve got so many people that I can trust to run the company I can take off from for weeks and everything’s be okay. Maybe the progress in engineering or development may not be quite as fast but they got plenty to do when I’m not around.

Tim Reid:

So, it’s all about surrounding yourself for the good people understanding what your strengths are and filling in the gaps.

Tom Dickson:

Exactly. Well put, Tim.

Tim Reid:

Tom, you have very high levels of employee engagement on par with much bigger companies.

From what I can tell you you have a plan to hand the business over Hollis bolus to the employees. That’s good incentive. What else do you do to keep them in love with BlendTec?

Tom Dickson:

Well, we’re self-insured. We have our own doctor and nurse. We have a fitness centre. We have two massage therapists that we charge our employees 10 dollars for an hour massage. We have a fitness centre with a trainer. We have all sorts of contests. We paid a lot of money to those people who lose weight and quit smoking and other things that are. And we have our own almost a million dollar restaurant in-house with chefs and wonderful food. And we have licenced therapists. Why say that. What am I saying.

Tim Reid:

Psychologist?

Tom Dickson:

Dietician. We try to help each other out. We had dietitians licence on staff and just people trying to help. We’re trying to be healthy. We’re trying to lower our costs. I mean we have by being self-insured We’re hiring a dentist and a hygienist and a chiropractor. And so we just want everybody to be healthy and happy.

Tim Reid:

It’s a resort not a workplace.

Tom Dickson:

Work out what they want. They have a lot of fun at the same time we do a lot of things together as employees.

Tim Reid:

Tom, I’d just like to finish with saying, in today’s world the opportunity to bring ideas not only to come up with ideas but to bring them to market quickly and easily. There’s never been a better time. There’s a lot of people out there,  there’s a lot of people listening including myself who have ideas every day and are entrepreneurial by nature. What’s your advice to people like that?

Tom Dickson:

Just keep the passion, work hard and you’re right this is the best time in the history of the earth to be entrepreneurial they come up with ideas. There’s always a better way to do everything. So find out what you like and surround yourself with the very best people and be honest. And that’s one thing. What this viral campaign you can’t do anything dishonest because it’s out there for ever and it will ruin you. But in your relationship with your man you just have to be honest in everything you do.

Tim Reid:

Great great advice. Tom Dickson, It’s been a pleasure having you on Small Business Big Marketing. I was excited from the moment your guy said yes to you coming on. I really appreciate you spending the time and sharing that wisdom because I know it’s going to benefit a lot of our listeners and answer a lot of questions in their mind about so many aspects of marketing and being an entrepreneur. So, thanks so much. Could you finish with a Small Business Big Marketing Will it Blend?

Tom Dickson:

Sure and thank you. The pleasure is mine and Will It Blend, that is the question.