Varun Rajan 0:07

Welcome back. Uh, this is season two of the Push-Pull Podcast. If you're new here, my name is Varun Rajan. Uh, this is a show about work, uh, not productivity hacks or career ladders necessarily, but really about the actual experience of trying to build a life through work and what happens when the thing that you thought you were building stops making sense, Season one was. Very focused on the transition points. That's where the name of the podcast comes from in the first place, right? Push and pull factors that inform the decisions behind the transitions. And I really prioritized having an alliterative title. Even though explaining it, it seems to take a long time and is filled with a bunch of jargon. Uh, but as you might imagine, I kept hitting the edges of that frame. Uh, transitions are. To be clear is still very interesting to me, but they're kind of just the punctuation of everybody's story. what I really wanted to understand was the sentences in between those punctuation marks, how do people build careers with staying power? Careers that hold up when the world shifts underneath them. And the world right now is shifting underneath pretty much everyone I know. Um, I've said this before, but AI obviously is the main character of that shift, whether we wanted to be or not, and I'm not interested in the doomerism. I've heard plenty of it. I'm also not interested in chasing trends and tools for their own sake. at least in my own life and my own work, I've found that that's not necessarily the most effective way to operate. I'm also not super interested in hot takes, even though I'm probably guilty of trying to put a bunch of my own out there. I'm interested in the people who are building through this transformation and who is figuring out what's actually durable beyond just the trends and every hot, shiny new tool. And that's what the season is about. It's about conviction over a sense of certainty, because that certainty is either going to lead you into naivete or complete nihilism, and that's what we want to avoid. My first guest this season is James Warren, the founder and CEO of Share More Stories, a company that uses a combination of AI and storytelling to help organizations understand the emotional truth of what their employees and customers are actually experiencing. I'm such a huge fan of James. He was warm, reflective, and insightful. He made it so easy to get to know him and learn from his wisdom, and as someone who identified as a writer for a significant portion of his life, James is someone who eventually accepted that the identity thread through his life was one of a storyteller, even from a really young age. Through an incredibly successful corporate career and multiple ventures geared towards some form of storytelling, he now runs a business where he uses AI to get to the heart of what really matters to organizations, people, their stories, and their experiences aggregated and cut and sliced in ways that are truly helpful towards business goals and to help people really thrive. We recorded this conversation about six months ago, but his wisdom still rings incredibly true. this part of the conversation is gonna be more focused on how he got to the path of entrepreneurship after a very successful corporate career. To be clear, we recorded this conversation about six months ago, but his wisdom still rings incredibly true. The world is changing rapidly. But you'll see from this conversation that it was changing quickly as James was coming up in corporate America too, and he found that his personality and disposition informed career choices, that started to become the norm a little bit later on. Super excited for you guys to hear more in this discussion. Okay, we're here with James Warren, the founder, and CEO of Share More Stories. Thanks for joining us, James.

James Warren 4:26

Thanks for having me. Glad to be here.

Varun Rajan 4:29

Cool. Um, can you give our audience a 30-second overview of who you are and what you care about today?

James Warren 4:35

who am I? I am a, a dad, a spouse, a researcher, a strategist, a storyteller, a writer. Those are all the things I kind of love to do and I care a lot about in my life. I also care a lot about the community that I live in Richmond, Virginia. And I care a lot about helping our customers who on a search, on a journey to really understand how they can make experiences in their organizations or in their brands, or in their communities better. So that's kind of me in a nutshell, is family community writing research. That's about it.

Varun Rajan 5:11

That's awesome. let's take it back and learn a little bit more about you. If, uh, I were to ask you where your career began, how far back would you go, uh, even if it's before, even if it's school, tell us a little bit more about what started the early shapings of your career.

James Warren 5:27

yeah, I would say my career probably started in the professional sense, when I started working for our Altria group in New York. But also the seeds of my career today as founder and CEO share more stories. Those started much younger when I was starting small businesses as a kid and as a teenager. And, a lot of the seeds of that, and especially the storytelling, I was storytelling as a kid and, writing as a young adult or teenager and those things. I would say also. preceded maybe not my professional career as much, but definitely preceded, my entrepreneurial journey.

Varun Rajan 6:03

tell me a little bit more about that. do, do you have a sense of a spark of like when you found storytelling to be powerful? In your life.

James Warren 6:13

it's funny you ask, so I tell people often. My, my mom told me that when I was really young, three years of age. She would, if they were having a cocktail party with their grownup friends, she would often ask me to come out from my room and I'd be in my pajamas with those plastic stock feet. I would just make up stories and they'd all be hilarious and they'd be laughing and they'd all be like, oh my gosh. And I don't have conscious memories of those days, but I remember my mother telling me about it. So in that sense, it definitely started really young, really early. I would also say that, the entrepreneurial bug. I remember feeling that way just from an early age. I don't know why, but I was one of those kids who would, go to the corner and pick up copies of, fortune Magazine and Wall Street Journal. But I was also like really into audio, video and audio engineering. So I pick up like Mix Magazine audio Magazine. I was just obsessed with the way. Things worked. I was obsessed with the way business worked. I was also obsessed at the time with the way recording industry and the audio video technology industry worked. So I just, growing up in New York, there were plenty of places to go learn more about it, so I, I did.

Varun Rajan 7:24

Yeah. Um, that's awesome. I'd be curious to know kind of, about your, there's your, your history growing up, you're interested in entrepreneurship, you're interested in storytelling. Uh, where did that lead you in terms of like where you went to school?

James Warren 7:39

I didn't have anything to do with it at all. in high school, I discovered that I had a pretty strong gift for writing. as I would do regular assignments, I found out that I loved it. I would enter writing contests at school and, my English teacher would encourage me to submit essays in competitive, outlets. for me, the writing was always seen as just a part of who I was and the thing that I did. And I really enjoyed it. I loved. That particular form of expression and feedback from people. going to Princeton, it didn't have a bearing on where choosing Princeton.'cause I always said to myself to a fault, I'm just going to college for fun because I'm gonna start my own business when I graduate college. And that wasn't necessarily the smartest play because it definitely had an impact on my grades. I eventually transferred to Columbia, and that was for writing because they had a phenomenal writing program. I immersed myself in it. I really wanted to much more deeply the different forms of writing, especially creative writing. and I loved it. I loved every minute of that. It was extremely hard. I remember. One of my professors or instructors of writing, literary short stories. He was himself a published author, definitely well known within like literary circles. But, when I went to my first class wrote, you have to write something every week for submission and review, and you workshop it as a group, but it also gets graded by professor. And after my very first week, he was like. you might be out of your depth. like that's how he like in Big red letters. And I was like, oh wow. And something to me said, don't quit. So I just kept going and. Other students who were maybe more advanced than I was, would say things like, don't worry about that. He's like that with everybody. you'll get better and he'll, you'll get used to it. And, gradually, as I did each week in that particular class, the red ink was less. and to me, the high point of it all was. My last that I wrote and submitted, his response was simply not bad. And I, I saw that as high praise from

Varun Rajan 9:46

Huge win.

James Warren 9:48

giant who'd stand outside, some archway on Columbia's campus with this collar turned up chain smoking cigarettes and be like, not bad, So that was a cool moment.

Varun Rajan 9:59

You mentioned this moment that you had where you decided to continue to go through with the program, even though it was really hard, uh, but there was a point in your education where you made a pivot to actually transfer to Columbia for this program. Um. I'm actually curious about and, and you know, this is something that I'm sure will come up later. It's, it's a theme. A a amongst a lot of these conversations is like when you choose to stick with something versus when you choose to make a change because. I, I, I've talked to a lot of people who have gone through like an undergraduate experience and kind of went through the whole thing and did the motions, myself included. even in those moments where they felt like maybe they would, uh, have wanted to make a pivot and do something else, uh, can you tell me a little bit about maybe some of the push and pull factors, like while you were in school, when you realized like, Hey, I came to, maybe I came to college for the wrong reasons, and how do I make the best of it going forward?

James Warren 10:52

one of the threads, one of the themes of the story of my life is situations that either have been beyond my control that were just really challenging, that I've had to respond to. challenges I've made for myself, and Princeton was, in many respects, I felt like there was an opportunity that I wasted there because I really was like, I'm here to have fun. I'm gonna start my own business. And I was confronted with the choice of, you can stay here, but you'll have to retake these classes or you can transfer out. And I chose to transfer out because I didn't, at the time, I felt too. I don't know if humiliated was the word, but too, still probably too full of myself, too much believing I'll just find another pathway. I'll just do something different. sometimes that mindset cost me, other times that mindset benefited me tremendously. So I've come to terms in general with the idea that there are times when I've, proverbially screwed myself over and other times where life has, and there's plenty of times I've turned. lemons deeply into lemonade, so in that case it was, that choice was not really a choice. It was a decision. And, when I went to Columbia, I still took some time off between, I think I took about a year off. in that year I tried a bunch of other things. I went to, Louisiana and did like an internship with, a school and a church community that, in hindsight, I wish I hadn't done. worked in the church that my mother was a minister in New York and did enjoy that, but I knew that was not my path, even though people really thought I should a minister. And I was like, people my whole life have been like, you should be a minister or a politician. And I'm like, neither. I want neither of those things. I felt a lot of that pressure at 20 and 20 19, 20 and 21 to be. either this perfect student, my older sister was the perfect student. She was incredible genius. And I also felt pressure to like, choose this path of ministry and that wasn't the path for me. So I don't know if, I don't know if that was what was having me subconsciously wander a bit, because I was very convicted early on that I wanted some combination of and entrepreneurial. Career. Career. And I didn't know what that looked like. I didn't know how to make that, but I knew that I had not found it yet. Every time I kept looking for something, I was like, no, that's not it. That's not it. I think the, I think there were bigger, the energy was pushing me away from those, even if I didn't think I wanted to be pushed away, I felt no, I want this, is, this education is expensive. We should get the most out of this. you should apply yourself harder and. My mother though, she was never the kind of person that would, wouldn't beat you up for it. She was very, almost to the hand, so laid back, so hands off. She would very much be like, okay. turn from that to the next step. she was very much a big believer in when that door closes, another door opens. And again, maybe that gave me this wide open perspective on life. Maybe it made me a little too lackadaisical in some things, or maybe it just gave me the freedom to try things when other people might not. I'm not a hundred percent sure which of those it is yet.

Varun Rajan 14:03

Yeah. it sounds like you had

James Warren 14:05

maybe a little bit of all three.

Varun Rajan 14:06

It sounds like it. It sounds like you had an early gut level conviction about the kind of stuff that you wanted to do. You were open-minded enough to start things like in service of that. You had moments where you maybe pushed yourself to align yourself with School or work or something that you might not have actually been, like accustomed to you, pushed back on other people's, like projections onto you of what they wanted for you. held onto that intuition and pivoted or stuck with things. when that intuition rang true, one way or another.

James Warren 14:34

I love the way you said that because, it's been relatively late in life that I've come into, come to terms and come to really understand what my intuition is and how it helps me and make decisions. then, I didn't really have a concept of it. wasn't fully separate and independent from a more maybe religious version of it being inspiration or divine inspiration or things like that. And that's about, but I think you're spot on. My intuition might've been working for me even before I knew it was intuition, and I think that's a really interesting thing for me to ponder.

Varun Rajan 15:06

Yeah. te tell me about what came after the, uh, creative writing program.

James Warren 15:12

Yeah. I got married young and I decided that I was not gonna write the Great American novel right away. So it was time for a job. And I've never been one to, at least the first half of my life, I was used to dealing with obstacles. So if somebody said, Hey, it's gonna be challenging for you to get a corporate job in corporate communications if that's not your field of study or if you don't have a degree in that. And I'd be like, I'll try and see what happens. So was very much through the first half of my life a try and see what happens type of person. I remember I got my first professional job at MetLife and I wasn't interested in building a career in that industry. I couldn't necessarily click at the time where I was working. I couldn't really click with the team or the culture. No big deal. It just wasn't the right fit for me. started looking and, got placed in like a temporary assignment at Altria Group in their corporate communications department. And I've been taught, like most of my life, if you see something that could be improved and you can improve it, you should speak up. And so I was in that role. They were getting ready to, I remember it so clearly. It was in the corporate communications department they were getting ready to hire for a, what they call the budget coordinator position, but they were looking for like and CPAs, and I was like. You don't need an MBA or a CPA for this job. And also, they're not gonna take this job like this is not the job for them. They want to go into either iBanking or accounting or management consulting or finance. And this is like a very special. Job in a corporate communications department to help you manage all these contracts and budgets that you have. So that's just an organization job, I'll take that. and they were like, alright, let's see how you do. And that was the first step. And so I took that job and immediately was able to prove myself in that role. And then they were like, Hey, it was initially an internship and they were like, we'd love to offer you a full-time position outside of their normal intern process. said yes to that and then they said, you've got a lot of potential. We'd like to offer you this position of expanded responsibility in the same general role. I said yes to that. And then they said, Hey, there's actually, we think you have long-term potential here. So there's an analyst position open over here that's really analyzing, consumer interactions, consumer customer service complaints. the company and you'd be the data analyst for that. I said yes to that and every job just kept bringing me new skill sets, new opportunities, and eventually got me closer to the core of what I spent most of my career at Altria doing, which was. comms, brand management or sales and new product development. I remember those days because, as I would do the work, new opportunities would come. And there was one point where I had just moved from New York to Richmond, still with the company. we were starting to explore new businesses, new brands, new products. and they said, Hey, would you like to be on this summer long? where you can explore the future of the company. I said, absolutely. and so I said yes to that. Spent the summer as part of one of three teams, secluded from the rest of the company. a lot of latitude to explore the future. And, when we arrived at our final plan and almost like a pitch, we delivered our pitch and our project was selected by the company move forward. And that gave me the chance to move from communications into brand, which was really the kind of the next big catapult in my career.

Varun Rajan 18:46

Very cool. tell me a little bit about, so you know, you were there for, at Altria for quite some time, right? it sounds like. you went in there and were relatively vocal in advocacy for yourself and your environment. and were rewarded for that. Uh, that's one thing that I heard. but I'm also. Curious, what advancement looked like there for you, because obviously you were there for, quite a long time, se several years, and like did really well there. and so I'm curious about kind of those moments where you had to maybe like push for yourself to do something. Were there moments that, uh, may maybe you struggled to, to know whether. Um, it was still the, the right place for you? yeah. What, what, what did your story there, uh, look like in terms of advancement and change?

James Warren 19:37

I think part of it is I learned you definitely need to advocate for yourself, but you also need to have people who are willing to advocate for you. And so I cultivated both mentors, advisors, coaches. Almost every manager I ever had I stayed in deep contact with when I no longer reported to them. And some of them I still do. They've mentored me. Way past my time at Altria, some of them into my career as a, leading the company that I started share more stories and beyond. And I stay in touch with a lot of them. I've been a relationship person most of my life and that worked well for me in the company, I would say, because I moved departments sort of three times. I moved from corporate communications, corporate affairs, that universe into brand management and marketing, and then once more into sales. are three very different career tracks in large companies, and you generally tend to stay in your functional area vertically and just move up. Sometimes you'll get a broadening exercise as they call them, or a leadership development assignment, or you got, might go work in another department to gain skills that might help you do your kind of next level job and your home function better. I was just always interested in trying new and different things and. I don't think it cost me at all. It definitely gave me a lot of skills, but it had an impact on what would've been a different sort of rate of progression. if I had stayed in one department and maybe if I'm 35, I might have been a VP at 35 in that department or not, but. I was, because of that movement from one department to another, that adds years because you gotta build new relationships and your new department has to really bring you in and see you as, see you the same that they saw somebody they hired as an intern and converted them, after college you've got to build new relationships, improve yourself sometimes again and again. and that part from, I like it. Not doing the job, but Hey, can we, do we think this person could run a business unit? That's the kind of thing that you would have to reestablish. If you were moving around departments too much and one year I was on a panel for the company, as we talked about our internship program to all of the company's interns that year. And on the panel with me, I was probably, all of us were directors. I was probably five to se seven years older than most of my peers on the panel. And they were like you say, directors from sales. I think I was that at the time. Or directors in marketing or directors in r and d. All of them had started outta school in that department and just moved up. And obviously I'd had this very, winding road, all the interns and students and they were like, who do you have questions? And who, they all wanted to ask me questions about my career because this was the start of, gen y millennials in the workplace. and the first real big shift in how people at work. I about their careers like this, was that was the generation of people that were leaving their jobs after three years. And

Varun Rajan 22:44

Okay.

James Warren 22:44

in the company were like, I don't understand. Why do they keep wanting to job hop? I was the only person not that age that they could look at and be like, he job hopped and look at him now. And I'm like, there's trade offs to that. there's, I got to try everything that I wanted to try and I'm also navigating my career maybe at a different pace and journey if it's about advancement. on a different timetable than some of my peers that stayed focused in one thing. and they didn't care. They were like, yeah, but you got to do so many different things. And that was my first clue that the expectations of work were really different. I don't have a lot of things that I think you can sum up to just being generational, but that was one of those things that I was like, wow, that is a clear a clear break from what the way it used to be to the way things are going to be.

Varun Rajan 23:33

In terms of how people coming into the workforce saw a successful career.

James Warren 23:40

Absolutely. Yeah.

Varun Rajan 23:41

Yeah, that's, that, that's an incredible insight. and it's a, it's a really great story and moment to capture that transition into how we are broadly thinking about work and knowledge work today. when you were making those transitions from corporate to brand to, sales, was it intentionally to do something different? you talked a little bit about like typically how these things happened. How did it happen for you? what drove those transitions?

James Warren 24:07

good question. the first one, from corporate to brand, my own leader, my own like directors and mentors. We're saying like, if you really wanna move up in this company, or you think you might wanna lead this company or a business unit, you've gotta get closer to the business. and so when I did that summer long project working on the future of the company, that was the best shot I'd have to get closer to the business because any place else, spots are competitive. if you've got a person you've had in your organization for six years that you hired right outta college. Develop them and there's a brand manager spot open, you're probably gonna put them in it versus somebody coming from corporate communications, like, why would you give that person the brand manager job? And when people said, he's got potential to do these other things. And I felt like I demonstrated my vision, my strategic thinking, my business acumen in that summer program. the one thing I did, we were all offsite for two days pitching like our extended leadership team. And all three teams were there. And, we got there like on day one, practiced in the retreat. Center day two where all the presentations, by the end of day two we all let loose.'cause it had been, 10, 12 weeks of like really intense pressure. felt like in some respects we had a crash course MBA, we had world class professors come to us and help teach us different concepts that maybe wouldn't have been exposed to in our day-to-day jobs. And, when they said, okay, this is great, we're gonna return to Richmond and we're gonna make decisions, next week, over the weekend and next week. So I went to my boss, my, my senior VP at the time, I said, Hey, I just wanna say if you are looking to decide who from the team should stay on this project full time, like to put my hat in the ring. And he said, I'm glad you said something, because we're about to make those decisions this week. I'm glad I know that's what you wanna do. And I said, great. So fast forward three days later, we're called back together, back up to like our shared workspace, and literally start giving us like real time feedback on our pitches and then saying, here's what we're going to do next. And they said this project, and they called out our names. They said, we're gonna move forward with this project and you are gonna be assigned most, mostly people who are already in their departments, like my director of marketing. Stayed in marketing, the director of r and d stayed in r and d, but on this project, and I was basically the only person who was not in their new function when they said, and James, you're gonna be on this too. You're gonna be in marketing as a brand manager. I remember being like, this is cool. I, worked hard for it, demonstrated it, asked, and got it. And really excited and that was that was more of a ask for it, get it. That next shift from marketing to sales was really a function of do we see James' long-term potential? Where does James wanna be? And my director, who's really a good mentor. He was like, look, you got a lot of options. You could stay in this role a little bit longer and make marketing director or, the folks in sales really want you. They want your leadership, they want your strategy, they want, you can make a big impact there. And so I said yes.

Varun Rajan 27:26

how long was that? What was the, like you, you had started, you had this like summer, experience.

James Warren 27:31

I mean I spent, seven years. I spent seven years, I think, or maybe six years total in marketing and brand management. And a lot of that was working on totally new products for the company, new brands, new and I loved that part. I absolutely loved it. because building things from scratch is one of the most exciting things for me. out how to make something out of nothing is what really motivates me. Intellectually, creatively, emotionally, I get a lot out of it. So when they said, Hey, we're gonna build a brand, we're gonna build a business, we're gonna do this. I love that stuff. and I tried to apply that for myself in the sales role in sales, by definition there's a lot of structure, there's a lot of, process that was, Altria's, a company that had products and has products that cause harm. And so there's a lot of. responsibility, corporate responsibility, things you just need to be able to navigate to keep the company safe, to be responsible to, the fact that you have a product that causes harm and everything else. And so it's not that I don't value process. If anything, my time at Altru taught me a lot about process and the value of it. It's that building something new and different in that kind of environment can be a challenge because it's designed to. Be easily replicable and executable and easy to understand exactly when we do this is the result we get. still really enjoyed it, and learned a lot about the most fundamental part of business, which is in my mind, your ability to sell, like revenue generation, Articulating your value proposition to a customer in a way that makes them say yes. And at a large scale, and especially in consumer packaged goods companies where you're retailing at either convenience stores or grocery or. big box. There's a lot that goes behind it in terms of trade programs and things that you do to get shelf space or get positioning, but you get that because you've built it on the back of the brand and the business, and you're able to negotiate for those things because the brand does matter in the marketplace. But there's moments where you still gotta, you can't just say, Hey, it's the biggest brand in the category. You should take it. You've gotta actually be able to sell. You've gotta be able to influence, you've gotta be able to lead. And those skills I learned. In the very beginning of my entrepreneur career, I didn't really know how put definitely those.

Varun Rajan 29:51

Yeah, that's, that's wonderful. the, tell me a little bit, so like when you made the transition into sales, how long were you there for and at what point. curious to know what were the friction points in, entering that role as well? and also like at what point did you decide it was time to move on and what were the reasons that you were thinking like, Hey, I'm being drawn to this, other thing versus my time here is done. I.

James Warren 30:15

I think, so before I moved into that role as it's called like a section sales director, before I moved into that role, I had done a short rotation in field, as they call it, in field sales, and that company being headquartered in Richmond. a large section sales office in Richmond a lot of leaders that were on a developmental assignment to learn the business would just go from headquarters into that section office. It was literally across town, that section office, and therefore those sales districts had a rotating door. a director would come in for 18 months development and go back out. A district manager would come in for a year and go back out. And that over time took that section from being number one in the country to 22 out of 22 because the leadership was just constantly revolving. And the team suffered a lot. It was no, there were no person's fault. It wasn't like the directors were bad, they weren't, they were great. And some of'em had going on to lead the company in other ways. like the district managers were bad, they were excellent. It's just that wasn't a sustainable process for growing that team. I was one of those rotational district managers when I was in marketing. I went out to the Salesforce for, eight months. It was only eight months and the first three months were miserable. I felt like I didn't know anything. It was like one of the first times in my career where I felt, Maybe at Altria, maybe the second time in my career where I felt like don't know what I'm doing and this does not feel good because I've been used to knowing what to do or what I'm doing in most of my jobs. So I didn't love that feeling. I felt resentful, like, why am I here? I'm a brand manager. people are like, don't worry. Just, just don't screw it up. ha. And I'm like, that's not good enough. And that's not fair to this team.

Varun Rajan 32:01

Yeah.

James Warren 32:02

these rotational dms. how do we make it better for them? And I was struggling so much and everybody there was like, Hey, we heard you're amazing. Like I was set up like really high expectations. they'd be like, we heard you're amazing. We can't wait to work for you. And like my first few weeks in the field were like, who is this guy and where do you come from?'cause I had almost no confidence. It was very frustrated by what I didn't know. And one day I had a person who worked in my organization and we would do things called Work Withs, where you'd go out. Into that person's territory and work with them either learning about their business or teaching them some concepts or vice versa. And we got to lunch and, the person I remember to this day, she said, how's it going? And I was like, it's going right. She's keep it real with me. How's it going? And I was like, it's tough. like, why is it tough? I was like, because I don't know what I'm doing. And she goes. Nobody expects you to. And I was like, I know that's part of my problem. She goes, no. What I mean is nobody expects you to know how to be a district manager inside of two months. But what we do expect you to teach us everything you can tell, teach us about the company strategy around the brand strategy.'cause that'll help us be more effective in our roles. And I was like, what do you mean? She's that's. The point is for you to teach us what you know and for us to teach you what we know, but nobody's expecting you to be us. that's not realistic. And it was It was eyeopening because then I was like, oh. She was like, yeah, don't worry about all that stuff. Like we'll get it done and you'll get it done. But you really wanna help us grow this business or improve in our skills, Teach us what you know. that just opened me up. I spent the next, it was almost like a light got turned on. So I spent the next few weeks and months just like grinding and I was enjoying it. And then they did a reorganization and I expanded my geography went down into North Carolina. Still loved it and just grinding. And then they were like, Hey, time for you to come back to the headquarters. And I was like, I was just starting to get good at this thing. they're like, yeah, you were never meant to be there forever. And I'm like. stop doing this to people. And so went back in for another two years or so in marketing, not even a year and a half, and then they were like, Hey, this director job right here has opened up. And I said, the only way I'll take it is if you promise not to yank me out in 18 months. And they said, you got a deal because we need, you. We're not asking you to do a assignment, a rotation. You're gonna move your career path from here to here and that's what you need to be sure you wanna do. And I said, yeah, I wanna do that. And that transition was, there wasn't as much friction when I moved into that director role because had the advantage of knowing a lot of the people that I just worked with a year and a half before. most times when you move into a new department in that kind of cross lateral way, you don't really know a lot of folks and

Varun Rajan 34:46

Yep.

James Warren 34:47

relationships. I had those, and so they were excited for me to be there. I was excited to be there, and it really felt like it was I just, I did not feel that same fear that I felt the first time where I felt like there's a lot of expectations and I don't know what I'm doing. I felt pretty good about it. I felt pretty good about it.

Varun Rajan 35:07

Yeah, that's awesome. I, I don't think I realized that you had gone from the marketing and brand side to sales and back and then back again. that's a wild ride.

James Warren 35:17

That's interns were like, I want your job. And I was like, like I said, there's levels to this. There's trade offs.

Varun Rajan 35:24

yeah. but te tell me similar vein to the question I just asked before, which is at what point did you realize it was time to, to move on? Because it sounds like this was the, coming back into the sales director role, this was the last position that you had at

James Warren 35:39

Yeah.

Varun Rajan 35:39

Altria.

James Warren 35:40

companies go through different types of restructurings and realignments and reorgs and. That was happening in general. And you reach a point sometimes where you realize, Hey, the path that I'm on that I thought I was on, I'm not on anymore. And then you have that choice. And so that choice was, I could either take a package and move it to another direction or not. and you probably know what's behind door number two. So I said, let's take the package and move on because. It clear in a pretty short amount of time. My path wasn't with the long term of the company. And I said, this is something I've actually been looking for, waiting for 10, 15 years. I'd started and tried several businesses during my corporate career, like not side hustles, but I wanna try this and see if it works, and I wanna try this and see if it works and nothing was working. And when I had that opportunity, I said, either stay corporate and make this career for the next 20 years, and we'll probably be fine. I'll be fine. You'll be fine. don't think I'll be happy. we could take this opportunity with this, you know what I call that my runway and

Varun Rajan 36:44

Yeah.

James Warren 36:45

let's, let's jump in with both feet. And my

Varun Rajan 36:48

Can I.

James Warren 36:48

let's do it.

Varun Rajan 36:50

J just to get some clarity around the choice you were presented with. It was like a early, it was basically like a package to, to part with the company. and then what was the alternative? Was the alternative just wait and see for the other shoe to drop? Or

James Warren 37:05

It, some of it starts to get personal, so

Varun Rajan 37:08

oh, I, okay. Fair enough.

James Warren 37:10

I think it's just best to leave it at sometimes you're confronted with that choice and it's time to move

Varun Rajan 37:14

Fair enough. Fair enough. Okay. Okay. Okay. yeah, sure. Okay. that makes sense. so cool. Okay. And then, your wife was on board also for you to strike out on your own.

James Warren 37:23

That was still very much part of the decision making process and as I was weighing options, it was. do we really lean into this opportunity to create a business, maybe change our life. and there's days I look back to be honest with you, and I'm like, depending, how you, how do you wanna measure the success of that decision, the quote unquote return on investment of that decision. in many respects, I feel like I would make that decision a hundred percent of the time all over again. I got thrown and I've had thrown curve balls throughout life so that. It's not about it hasn't been easy, although it has not been. But I do sometimes wonder, when I think about my family and I think about, how I'm one of two providers. I'm definitely not one of those like I'm the provider or breadwinner. It's not like that. In our family, we are responsible and I feel that way and my wife feels that way, so I knew I would be putting more pressure on her, and I knew that might also mean that have to say no to some things that we otherwise wouldn't have had to say no to. When I think about the work that I've been able to accomplish since then, sometimes you just find yourself on a different path. And the question is, can I embrace this path? Or if I don't like it, can I forge a new path? a lot of my life has been about forging that new path, including that transition into entrepreneurship. And the first year of that, which was, that was excruciating, the first year was. One of the hardest years I've ever had is one of the more, humbling tear-filled years. it was tough. It was tough making that transition. And, I tell people all the time, if you're going to become, an entrepreneur, you wanna start your business or that's your, you have to not just have quote unquote money in the bank. You need to have, emotional, resilience in the bank. You need to be to withstand the. The days that make you question everything, you need to be able to withstand that too.

Varun Rajan 39:21

you talked a little bit about wanting to start something even while you had your corporate job. Now you had a chance to go all in on it. where did that land you at the end of the day? I guess like after being in it kind of full time, after that first year.

James Warren 39:36

Yeah, I had dreams, for years and I tend to write my dreams down I'm constantly writing the future, this is what I believe will happen. This is what I want to happen, because it, it doesn't make me lazy. It motivates me to make that dream a reality. And so sometimes I look back and be like, oh, I wrote the thing that I'm doing now. I wrote about this a few years ago, so I had visions of what starting. My company and business would look like because it was a version of what I'd been trying since 2099, 2000. My first business that I started a digital book publishing company before eBooks were a thing, and were really trying to get her off the ground, focused on the e-learning space, turning textbooks into e eTextbooks and right before that first.com crash, that's where we were. we were pitching, we were meeting folks, we were in the scene, but we weren't making real substantive progress. And we had to shut that down partly because of the.com bust. And partly because my first marriage started to, fall apart at that time. And so I knew that we were going in our own directions and that business idea died with it. it's gotta leave that in the past. Fast forward 2005. I'm like, there's still something about building a business around writing or creativity. So I started the digital book project and I was trying to a, create an example of how you could publish a book chapter at a time with real time audience feedback. I thought it was pretty different at the time because most writers attacked writing with, this is everything in my head and I gotta get it out. And then they go through the feedback process. Or sometimes they don't even know if people will like what they wrote until it's done. And you find out the hard way they don't. also we were, I was very much interested even then how could I create a community of readers around this book? And of course now we have all kinds of platforms like that and didn't have a lot of capital or money to build it. So I was really just. Really what we now call MVPing it. I remember, these were the days where you didn't have like cloud, the way we have cloud today, right? You had to buy like a big subscription to or these companies where you do a desktop sync of files to your web-based server. And it was very, cumbersome. I remember for whatever reason, my, I hadn't been backing up my chapters, even though I was writing them. I hadn't published them to the website or backed them up. My wife and my now wife and I were out for an evening and all of a sudden I get these phone calls and it's my like, home alarm company. And there had been a break in and my laptop was stolen with tons of chapters that I had not published or uploaded or backed up. that was like a gut punch and I was like, okay, maybe I should just give like. Maybe this is not my path. Maybe I'm just not gonna build a company or a business and I just let it go. But when it was time to say sink or swim, jump in, with both feet, something told me I was still back to, it's gotta be something related to writing or publishing and digital and tech. So the first concepts were still thinking do I publish a tool? is this tools for writers? creative, co-creative writing at that time was a new idea. collaborative writing was a new idea, and so I was like, Hey, maybe we should build something like that. And, I started doing my MVPs and people were like, no, not interested. Too tricky, too complicated. And then I started to really stumble back to stories and some of my earliest advisors would say things like. you've always been a storyteller. And I'd be like, but I'm a writer. And they're like, yeah, but first you're a storyteller. And that just kept sticking. And then somebody said, you know what's interesting is you're actually exploring the relationship between the person telling the story, the person listening to the story and the story itself. like you're describing story sharing. And I was like, sharing stories. Yeah. I want people to share more stories. And that's literally how. idea and the name of the company came to be.

Varun Rajan 43:41

that's fantastic. I want to get to the whole arc of share more stories. I was under the impression that you had additional kind of like another corporate gig after that.

James Warren 43:49

No, so I, I started, my own business to figure out what I wanted to do. I

Varun Rajan 43:55

yep.

James Warren 43:55

get people saying, Hey, could you help with this? Could you consult with that? And I didn't wanna get too stuck in that, but I also. I would be, it'd be great to bring in some of that income while I was starting to build out, share more stories. And so I started, I think I remember clearly Warren Ventures. I started on may one and share more stories. I started on June one. and Warren Ventures eventually just went away'cause it was really just a shingle to hang out to, to be able to do business and do work. the focus quickly shifted to SMS that was a summer and a fall of just lots of iterative learning, testing, learning, concepting, networking. finally found somebody who could help build what we were envisioning, at least that very beginning. going into the fall, it was starting to think about, okay, well is the revenue model? How am I gonna pay bills? What are we gonna, how am I gonna make money in this business? And, What kind of capital do we need to grow this business? And it was clear, like I was not anywhere near ready for raising any kind of real investment dollars, but also some of that was self-imposed. maybe fear because obviously there's a few folks out there who have raised money on more, more so than their idea, their ability to sell the idea. I was definitely like, this is my first time starting a company that needs external capital and I'm not sure if I've done all the things that make it capital ready. So let's just focus on this part in front of me. I don't think that was the best decision looking back. I understand why that James thought that way, but I don't think that way. Now I'd also say that crowdfunding was becoming really big like, that sounds like a way we should go raise money. There were all these like new crowdfunding success stories that were a small desk scale version. Valley, make it big stories. And I felt like we were heading to a point where we needed to get some additional capital to build, and we had a working prototype and we had these other things. And so started preparing for a crowdfunding pan campaign. This is now November of 2014, so few months after starting the company and, launched the crowdfunding campaign and complete and total failure. for one thing, one person who left, I think we were on Indiegogo. We do, we weren't on, Kickstarter. And one person left a message. I remember the message. And the message was like, I don't understand why you're raising money for this, because you've already built the product. Just sell the product. I was thinking like, but no, this product is just like a basic website. Like it's not big enough, it's not flashy enough, it doesn't have all the features I want. It's not cool enough. And it was like, but this is what you have built and you should sell this. And so that was a, that was an awakening for me. It was a big awakening because at that time I didn't know much about, I knew a little bit about MVP, I really didn't understand the concept of lean startup. I didn't understand this sort of different philosophy of iteratively build, test, learn. I didn't understand that. And now I had to like experience that firsthand. you have built something, so now you gotta start testing it and you gotta learn and see if it works. And so that was, that was another humbling experience because I really thought we were gonna create some big, audience and movement and get people excited and, and take it to the next level and did not happen. And then it was now the holidays, right? And the holidays were like, lean. So now I'm having my one of those first gut check moments of did I make a mistake? Have I asked my family to take on something that, was too much for them. that's about the time that some of my mentors really started stepping in stepping up, like coaching me through it, telling me things like, number one, you're gonna be all right. Number two, you're gonna be all right. And number three, here's how we're gonna help you be all right. you need to. And then they started getting almost like fatherly. this is no longer a coaching session. This is a tell you what to do session, do these things. I'd go do these things and then I'd come back, all right, good. Now I want you to go meet with this person. I'm like, what do you want me to talk about? James, figure it out. Okay, good. Go figure it out. And so that kind of pushed me back into an action mode. I'll also say at that point, the financial pressure of building a business was starting to become really real. And so I had to make another decision, do I. Make this more of a side hustle or go and go back to corporate? Or do I just, we do, we suck it up and keep going. I'd go on job interviews where people wanted to interview me for like VP of Marketing and they'd say, tell me about the share more stories. And I'd I, my inner brain would be like, don't say it. Don't say it. Don't say it. And I'd be like, let me tell you. It's just this most amazing. They'd be like, I figured you'd say that. I could tell you have a lot of passion for it.

Varun Rajan 48:41

Yeah.

James Warren 48:41

I'd be like, yeah, I do. And they'd be like, I'm not sure if this is the right job for you. I'd be sitting across from like the EVP making, the hiring decision. And I couldn't contain my enthusiasm for this business that he wanted. All he wanted to know was, can you make it a side hustle and just keep it there? And I couldn't say it's a side hustle. I couldn't, he'd be like, so is this like a side hustle? And I'd be like. He'd be like, okay, why are you here? And I'd be like, is the, I need a job and money answer. Okay. And so that was tough because I had opportunities that I, from here, from like my gut and my spirit, I could not say yes to, even if I wanted them. And I did want some of them. And I was like, we'll just have to see what happens. The universe will work it out. If I'm supposed to get this job, I'll get this job. But if I don't, I gotta keep building, share more stories. And the universe was generally like keep building, share more stories. And so,

Varun Rajan 49:37

There's, there's an element of that, but in the examples that you're talking about, I'm hearing you coming in with your excitement and passion for the project that you had, like sabotaging yourself in those interviews.

James Warren 49:48

of the universe. I'm part the universe, giving myself cues. I'm

Varun Rajan 49:52

Of course.

James Warren 49:53

I'm on the ride. You know, I might even be steering the rocketship. You know it, you're absolutely right. There was a conscious and subconscious pulling to this direction.'cause I could have, I didn't have it in me to lie about it, but I also could have sold it and managed it and just not have it been an issue. Like

Varun Rajan 50:12

Yeah.

James Warren 50:13

impossible. And then, and I could have, if I made different decisions, it would've been different, but I didn't. And so that's what I had to navigate. And wife was still super supportive right there with me. I'm like, okay. then one day my mentor said, I think you've got something here. but I think what you've got is a really good idea. But you don't have a product and you don't have a business. and I think it can be one. And he said, I need you to, I want you to go meet with this guy Ken Johnson because you know, he'll get your vision and he'll get your idea. And he's got, at that time, 20 plus years of experience. building businesses, his own business and others, and he'll help you you can help him. You can help him with the agency because you've got a lot of branch strategy expertise and the corporate background and talk to him. So I went down there and that was one of those days again where I was just feeling like low defeated. And I go have lunch with Ken and we talk about the future and it was okay, but it wasn't great. And then he was like, why don't you come back to the, come back to around the office, tomorrow. Let's talk some more. So Ken, great. Went home, didn't know what was gonna happen, came back the next day. And really cool offices in the Manchester area of Richmond, which is like. Converted warehouse-y type district. And I remember even walking in being like, there's something about this place. I can feel like I like it. There's something about the wood and the steel and the glass and I feel like this is a place where like people are creative and entrepreneurial. felt a version of safety's not the right word, but belonging. I I felt okay, this could be a good place for me to grow to put down roots. And we sketched on a whiteboard for the next two hours, just riffing off of each other, talking about the future of what he wanted to build with the agency. JMI, what I wanted to build with, share more stories. How we could build these things together. And at the end, we made a deal, it was almost like agreeing to get married before we knew each other. So he agreed to become a partner, really an investor in my company and give us runway and, access to resources, capacity, talent. And, I agreed to help him build his agency. And so the next set of years, we operated in that space and I gained a, not just an investor and a business partner, I gained a mentor, a friend, a lot of like life coaching stuff and fathering and parenting. We, we'd go through that. I really learned how as an entrepreneur, He understands what it is to persevere in pursuit of a vision or a dream. working with him, working, for him and also having him as an investor in my company. Some of those years were some of those times I would say were tough because again, it was almost like we said yes to a really intricate and close business relationship. After knowing each other for two days. It was almost an arranged marriage at bus in business.

Varun Rajan 53:10

And that's part one of my conversation with James Warren. The thing that I kept coming back to after this conversation was the intern panel story. James was in a room full of directors who had climbed up their functional ladders vertically and He found himself in a room full of young people that wanted to know how he did it. The more winding way, the way that was a little bit more off the beaten path. He said that it was one of his first clues that the expectations of work were changing. And that was like 20 years ago, probably 2005, 2006, and he was right. That trend has only accelerated since, which tells me a couple of things. One, from James' perspective. He strikes me as somebody that followed the beat of his own drummer, right? There was an internal sense of conviction he was actually interested in going across all of these domains in the corporate part of his career. Um, and. He was able to stay ahead of an actual market shift and trend, not by identifying and chasing a trend early, but by actually staying true to the kind of person that he was. And I think that's really important for us to keep in mind today. And what else strikes me having heard the full arc of James's story is that the winding road wasn't inefficiency. It was research. Every lateral move, every department switch, Everything that he had to relearn from scratch was building his ability to read organizations from the inside to see where the energy is, where it's stuck, and why. That's a capacity that is really hard to put on a resume and incredibly difficult to fake in a room and. It's also, I'll say much more about this in part two of my conversation with James, it, it's also pretty much exactly what share more stories is trying to give leaders at scale, especially with the SEEQ platform, at least as I understand it. And so next week the story will shift a register a little bit. We'll learn more about the, inception and evolution of share more stories, what it actually became, what it took to get there, And, uh, we'll get more personal with James as well. So, uh, that's next week. If this episode landed for you, please share it with someone who's navigating their own winding road, and I will see you soon.