End Hype with Callye Keen
End Hype coaches brilliant misfits, innovators, and outsiders to transform product ideas into business realities from real experience without the fluff. We deliver business knowledge gained from developing and manufacturing 100s of products.
The information comes from hard fought experience working with high-growth startups and major corporations. This show is for entrepreneurs who want better lives, more impact, and greater results. We are for the outsiders who understand action is only path to making the future.
We are sick of ...
- Business books with 200 pages of filler
- Gurus copying and offering useless content
- Venture capitialist bankers offering startup advice
- Fancy talk from fancy people with zero action
Of course not.
We connect with guest experts to accelerate learning to answer new challenges. Our network and community is growing every day. Learn with us and share in the story as we grow.
Entrepreneurs are uniquely capable of improving their lives and their communities. Stop talking about what you could do. Listen in and take action. Innovation changes how we live, work, and interact.
We create new opportunities.
Change your life.
Change the world.
Through collaboratively developing and manufacturing 100s of products, Callye saw a massive range of strategies, tactics, successes, and failures firsthand. He packaged this experience into the Red Blue Collective framework.
Callye has presented at national events, spoken at universities, and ran successful incubator programs. Clients have built 7-8 figure businesses, raised investment, and sold products around the world.
End Hype with Callye Keen
Scott Alexander - Building a Craft Business
Callye Keen talks about one of his passions, art. But not art in a traditional sense, art from the perspective that the world's not all about super technical products and building drones with AI. We have little pieces of art all around us, and in this episode Callye shares a different perspective on everyday art.
Scott Alexander sits down with Callye to discuss his journey from art school, to working for a large catalog company, to managing a team, and ultimately feeling unfilled with Corporate America. Scott started making furniture in his garage as a hobby, using only hand tools to create beautiful masterpieces.
“I live in an area where I couldn't take a class. I'd have to fly halfway across the country to get to a qualified instructor. I hopped on YouTube, bought a couple of DVDs and dove in. Eventually I figured it out. I was awful at it for the first couple of years. Little by little, I've been turning now for seven years, I went full time in August of 2020.”
“You can really build whatever life you want, if you're willing to do the work. And for me, it has been about learning the craft, becoming truly great at it. Undeniably great at it."
[02:30] Acknowledge the spark
I cobbled together my first lathe from a bunch of parts. I taught myself how to turn chair parts. After I made about a dozen chairs my wife asked me “do you think you could make us a bowl for the house?” And that was it. That was the spark that started everything.
[04:00] When mentors become peers
I’ve become great friends with some of the world's best production woodturners. It's kind of unreal to be seven years in and be able to hop on the phone with some of these people. And they're not mentors anymore. I'm almost an equal, which is kind of a cool thing.
[05:10] Superior product
There really hasn't been any secrets to it other than a lot of hard work and trying to take care of customers. Just keep trying things, try to make a product that stands above its function.
[06:43] Long lasting products
That's the counterpoint to making something that lasts. You make something truly amazing, make something worth sharing and it lasts forever. You have the length of that product to impress somebody else.
[09:40] Buy for life
A small part of what I'm trying to do help people to realize that you can buy something and enjoy it every day. Something sustainable and well crafted. There's a growing movement to buy for life. And that movement is at at the intersection of ecologically and sound principles. Support entrepreneurs. Support made in America. Buy high quality products.
[12:15] Family business
I'm hoping that their daughter takes over that company and keeps running it the same way, and doesn't go the way that other US manufacturers have gone. I've seen some really great manufacturers cash out and sell to a big corporation. And then within two years, the brand is gone.
[13:53] Quality erosion
Picking up our phone we say, “oh, there's a new app. This old one's no good”. And it's contributed to this replacement economy. Tech products are a good example, your phone itself or the computer that I'm using. We understand that in six months, it's not so hot. And in two years it’s garbage.
[17:17] The choices we make
There are some things with our modern lives that are amazing. I just think that we need to take a step back and make sure that the things we're doing with our purchases, with our money, with our lifestyles are in our best interests.
“He's literally cutting down a tree. Chopping it up and making his own blanks. So from the ground to the finished bowl, and I love your content.”
Learn more
https://alexanderdesigns.us/