“Giving Time Back” — with Joe Hollier, Co-Founder of Light

Today, we’re speaking with Joe Hollier, Co-Founder of Light . We discuss Joe’s website, fiveonthat.com, meeting his co-founder to create Light, and how the Light Phone is giving people their headspace back.

Today’s episode of Journey Map is brought to you by MindManager.

Journey Map listeners know that with the right map you can take your career anywhere you set your mind to. MindManager work management software puts your ideas, plans and projects on the path to success by transforming them into dynamic digital maps, charts, diagrams and more. Mind Managers flexible visual format makes it easy to capture, organize, understand and evolve critical business information and with powerful collaboration sharing features it’s the perfect tool for keeping remote teams aligned, on track and headed in the right direction.You can take a free thirty day no commitment trial today by visiting www.mindmanager.com/journeymap.

Today’s guest graduated from the School of Visual Arts in New York City with a degree in Design, where he was valedictorian of his graduating class. Some of his clients include Nike, CNN, and the Lincoln Center. In 2014 Print Magazine recognized him as one of the top 20 visual artists under the age of 30. In 2016 he received the prestigious A.D.C. Young Guns award. And in 2020, he was named one of Forbes 30 under 30 in the category of consumer technology products. In 2014 he set out to co-found and design a product built out of the need for simplicity: the Light Phone. For those of you who don’t know The Light Phone is a phone that is designed to be used as little as possible and gives us back the most important things we too easily take for granted, our time and attention.

Today’s episode of Journey Map is brought to you by MindManager. Journey Map listeners know that with the right map you can take your career anywhere you set your mind to. MindManager work management software puts your ideas, plans and projects on the path to success by transforming them into dynamic digital maps, charts, diagrams and more. Mind Managers flexible visual format makes it easy to capture, organize, understand and evolve critical business information and with powerful collaboration sharing features it’s the perfect tool for keeping remote teams aligned, on track and headed in the right direction.You can take a free thirty day no commitment trial today by visiting www.mindmanager.com/journeymap.

DH: Today’s guest is Joe Hollier, co-founder of Light. Joe, welcome to Journey Map!

JH: Thank you so much! What a warm intro! I appreciate it.

DH: It’s my pleasure. Joe I’m gonna include a link to this in the show notes but I stumbled on your valedictorian speech from when you graduated from the School of Visual Arts. You gave a quote at the end of the speech, kind of like your culminating quote. Do you remember what that quote was and who it was by? You said it was one of your great influences.

JH: Yeah it was aDavid Foster Wallace quote. He was referencing Kafka’s stories and trying to teach the students about Kafka’s work and the quote I’m probably gonna paraphrase it badly but something to do with knocking on this door wanting so badly to get in and when we actually finally open the door we realize you’ve been in side where we wanted to be all along. I think especially in the context of graduating college there’s all these places and things that we are all so eager to go to and you know kind of wanting to step back and remember this is it, this is our life. You know there’s always going to be another level that we want to get to, or another job, or something but to not forget the journey along the way as you know the real part of the trip.

DH: Yeah so here’s the question I want to ask to kick things off, it was 2012 that you gave that speech and I loved that quoted and how you ended it. My question is now in 2020 as you’ve lived another 8 years of your life both personally and professionally how has that quote changed or morphed for you? or what does it mean to you now that it didn’t necessarily mean to you back when you delivered that message in 2012?

JH: I mean I think it probably speaks to the same idea but I think the 8 years of adult experiences the ups and the downs have definitely made the words resonate in a much deeper way than I probably could ever understood those words to mean to me when I was you know graduating college this little 20 year old 21 year old.

DH: Yeah I understand where you’re coming from with that. I’m going to be honest your bio is so rich and there’s so much there that getting down to our introductions format it either would have been as condensed as we made it or it would have had to be like 3 times longer. So we chose to keep it a bit tighter, but there’s so many interesting things beyond what I shared in the bio that I want to dive into. Let’s next go to five on that. This is this skateboarding company that you founded in high school selling skateboards, clothes, and posters. Here’s why I’m so interested, I actually had invested in a skateboard design company when I was in post secondary myself. A buddy of mine was a great designer, he’s like a wicked tattoo artist now. He was designing all these skateboards and so when I saw this I was like okay let’s definitely jump on that. So five on that, what was the founding story there?

JH: It was really organic in the sense that we were all in eighth and ninth grade skateboarding, and skateboarding naturally kind of introduced all of us to these various art forms that now you know really defined my life. But at the time we didn’t even really think about the word art, and I think you know we just kind of wanted to make ourselves a video, and then as we made a video we said “Hey we should give ourselves a name” and I was like “Oh maybe I should learn how to make a website” and learn how to print some T-shirts. It was just organic curiosity and interest, there was never any sort of business mindset or money making side of it. It was really about just loving something so much that you just want to make it yourself. Then you know by the time college came five on that had really kind of informed my decision to go to the School of Visual Arts and pursue this word art that was kind of unfamiliar to me but that

I had a very genuine interest and passion. It kind of became this platform that stayed with me over time, it was really collaborative so like I almost hate taking ownership of it because there are so many close friends that participated in so much of the levels of the creation along the way and supporting it. By the time we were in college we were using it to post art shows, where all my skater friends we could put our art up and then try to sell prints and pay our rent. It kind of just became this platform to create without the kind of like money side attaching itself to the projects that clients were asking us to create.

DH: So fast forward to what five on that has become today. Obviously we’re gonna include the link in the show notes, if you’re listening right now the url is www.fiveonthat.com. It’s maybe the most interesting thing on the internet I’ve stumbled on in a while, largely because our producer Ellory introduced it to me as he founded this skateboarding company called five on that, so when I clicked on the link I assumed it was going to take me to some like Shopify store with like skateboards for sale. Instead what I found was maybe one of the most eclectic mix of randomly generated photos, but it still all makes sense when you scroll through this site (which is a big scroll).So I’ll let people experience it for themselves. I want to ask you a couple of very specific questions. There’s a photo about a quarter of the way down and it’s from 1976 and it’s the Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company and it’s a man standing in the center of the image wearing a red blazer sport coat and then two employees I’m assuming on either side of him one with an apron that says “Price” and then one with an apron and a bow tie that says “Pride”. Why did this photo specifically make its way onto the site and you could I really probably gonna ask this question of any photo I just decided that I take this one to try to pick your brain on why this made its way onto the site?

JH: No that’s super interesting and it’s awesome because I probably didn’t have too much consciousness of a reasoning. I mean a lot of the images I have been pooling, and collecting for years through college a lot of it is related to my thesis and five on that would use these images in different ways. At one point in life we did have a Shopify site and we would use these pieces of paper that were cut out different ways and I think that “Price & Pride” one just really stuck out to me because I was really frustrated with capitalism and the kind of ways that art has to try to fit into this kind of American economy. I think it just rang out as this really funny image, I mean like the colors are really beautiful, it is just such a bizarre kind of almost ironic image I think in my mind. A lot of it was just trying to poke fun at it by just showing it in this context.

DH: Thanks for sharing that. The part I love the most about you explaining that is that there’s probably not a ton of rhyme or reason as to why these made their way on, but I think where I’m going to go with this points after I ask you a few more things about five on that, is that just as a person who appreciates design especially product design myself. When you start to investigate more of your work and see more of the things that you’ve done including Light and what you guys have done with the Light Phone which is where we’re gonna go next, when you stumble on something like this all of a sudden it makes more of your creative journey make a lot more sense to me. Anyway maybe I’m being too philosophical about this, but it just to me when I landed on five on that it communicated so much about your aesthetic sense and sensibility, and it made understanding how a person like yourself could then go on to be the co-founder of Light and the Light Phone that much more clear.

JH: I mean that’s awesome, that’s such a high level just as feedback that makes me so happy to hear because it is an extension of my mind. I remember my thesis teacher from college when I was making a lot of work in the vain of five on that, you know when I told you about the Light Phone years later he said “Oh wow this is like the most natural thing you could have done”. Even though it’s seemingly the opposite of cutting out paper and trying to start a technology company.

DH: Yeah well you know it’s things like that, I scrolled down a little bit further and there’s like this cut out of a woman’s eyes wearing brightly colored makeup and you can actually just tell that it’s Rhianna but you don’t know… anyway it’s just like this whole thing is amazing. You just go through this and it just makes you feel good, and I don’t fully understand how it’s doing it but it makes me feel good. So the Light Phone you get into Google’s 30 week Founder Program for designers, you meet your co-founder there. I’m assuming it’s kind of like you get carried up at some point you guys naturally drift towards each other. So if you could summarize what you got out of that program and then how did taking the program help inspire the launch of the business?

JH: Totally yes. So the program was pitched to me as a kind of a vague experiment and I think curiosity probably led me to actually joining it. I’m almost definitely always kind of skeptical of Google so there was always kind of that friction, but I said you know what the hell I should give this a shot and see how this might inspire future five on that websites. So you know I wasn’t really thinking of starting a tech company but that was kind of the premise of the program, so in many ways I credited that as a catalyst. But in the programs the structure of it was a school year long but basically every day we had different founders, investors, or thought leaders coming to the office and you know being very honest and sort of explaining the ‘how’s’ and ‘why’s’ of why these different businesses were being built. We saw a pattern, a kind of model that was really the kind of only staple model that the VC’s liked and which a lot of the founders embraced which was around advertising. Advertising makes something sticky, if you can make an app, or a product, you know those were all software based things that they wanted. Sticky they would call it, and if people could use it for hours a day you could scale it by making it free and then you could just collect you know more, and more, and more data while selling more and more ads, and people would kind of be okay with that because they’re already sort of hooked. I was in that program like wow that’s the last thing the world needs is another smartphone app that’s taking two more hours of my day. When I look around me and when I think about my relationship and anyone I see, everyone seems to be overwhelmed and wanting an escape. So I just kind of naturally took to a kind of critical rebel point of view of saying like you know I want to make something that does the opposite of all the smartphone apps. That brought up the idea of the light phone and Kaiwei who was also in the program. I mean we were all kind of throwing a lot of different ideas on the table. His background, and we were already just friendly in the program, was in making cell phones. So when I landed on the idea of a simple cell phone I immediately started picking his brain and was just like you have to be my partner, we have to do this together. He definitely started by saying making a cell phone is really hard, you don’t want to make a cellphone. But naive Joe didn’t quite take that one to heart.

DH: If you don’t mind sharing roughly how many people now use the light phone in the world?

JH: Tens of thousands it’s probably over 30,000 or more.

DH: So if you think of the collective headspace that you’ve given back to people somewhere probably in the millions of minutes based on those users. How do you feel going back again to your valedictorian speech and you say in there I’m gonna paraphrase, but you want to make sure that the graduates of your year aren’t sitting in the audience 30 years later watching their children graduating from the same school and listening to someone like yourself deliver the same message which is to go out and make impact now, and to do something now, and that we don’t have a lot of time. That’s why I put the Light Phones impact in terms of millions of minutes likely that you’ve given people back. How does it feel knowing that at least from 2012 you wanted to intentionally pursue a life where you could seize the day for lack of better term?

JH: No I totally do, I mean it’s completely and utterly overwhelming, and you know the most humbling feeling ever. I’ve never actually quite thought about it in terms of minutes, that’s like woah I might tear up. I feel so grateful to work on something that I am as passionate about as Light Phone. I think the side effect is like I always wonder how much time have I wasted on the Light Phone personally? It’s easy to look at other metrics some days you know like what’s the environmental footprint of all these phones and you know it’s definitely a tricky slope but it’s the most humbling thing I’ve ever imagined. We hear stories from users who tell us the positive impacts the Light Phone’s having, and these new habits that they’re forming. It’s like I wish my art could have done that but you know from those years in between that even though I would make art and people would appreciate it, it wasn’t having that tangible difference you know? You might watch the video and be moved a little bit and scroll through the five on that site. I really wanted to have people feel it, and live it, and you know I felt like that would be a catalyst to hopefully bigger change that would be beyond what I was ever capable of whatever that could take.

DH: Yeah I hear you on that. It is very incredible the impact that you are making. I think especially in our post pandemic world the idea of simplifying our lives and remembering what’s really important I wouldn’t be surprised if it contributed to the success of the Light Phone 2 which is now out correct?

JH: Yep

DH: If the success of the Light Phone 2 doesn’t skyrocket as people rethink their priorities in life. So listenI’ve got maybe 30 more seconds, I’m going to ask you this question and I’m very interested in the answer. What is the Joe Hollier superpower?

JH: I guess when I think about what I probably uniquely bring is I would like to think at least it’s just an utter honour honesty trying to always do things the way that I would want them done to me when it comes to treating our customers, or being honest with myself and my motivation for doing anything. I think I’m probably overly self aware in some regards to this but I think my intentions are as honest as I think they could possibly be, and I think that somehow resonates to people. They don’t see it as a ‘sales-y’ or something else because I mean it when I say don’t take your time for granted. I believe it.

DH: Well I will say in closing first off thank you for joining us I really enjoyed the conversation. I could have just kept going for another two hours on this topic, so maybe we’ll come back for part 2. But the whole time we’ve been talking about this is the truth when I’m not looking at my notes I have the lightphone.com open and I feel like I just meditated for like 20 minutes just watching the home banner video. So you really practice what you preach, you’ve built some amazing products. I hope people will go and check them out and support you. I hope that your movement to give people more time back will have made your time worth it. So again thank you so much for joining us and can’t wait to see where the journey goes.

JH: My pleasure thank you so much.