James Tulin 14:57

Hmm. So how do you rise above the noise I think that pretty pictures are one thing. But I think content has a significant impact when it’s authentic. And my background is such that when you have a company that lasted 115 years, that ain’t accidental. The average tenure of an employee at our former company was 32 and a half years. And when I tell that to people, they don’t believe me. It’s true. It’s true. The reason being is that we had a family business, but the family business was not relegated to only my father, my brother, and myself. It was relegated to everyone that worked for a company, or 1500 of them, they all felt part of the process. So my background is so steeped in having it drilled into me, the value of the people that work with you, alongside of you, and the value of the consumer, because they’re the ones that keep the lights turned on. So our motivating, driving force amongst everything is exceeding the customer’s expectations. Because if we do, they will love us for life. And having spent my life in that environment, I know how to do it. And that messaging and that processing, and that engagement, will be so strong, from the input into the development of the product, all the way to how a customer is treated, when the black hits the fan, and they are p owed. And I want to speak to someone in charge, and so on and so forth. My former company when there was an issue, customers can no questions asked, long before it became in vogue. And when people really believe that, look what made bonobos so significantly powerful. They’re ninjas, consumer loved the quality of service, that it probably preempted the product that they were selling, but their customer service was so superior. It’s like Carl, there are massive companies like AT&T, and you name it, and Capital One and Visa and American Express. To me. There’s nobody even in the same league as American Express, their customer service is so superior, it’s not even close. Not even close. To all those out there. I apologize, AT&T. They don’t have a clue how to do it right. And all they do is offend their consumers. Fortunately, it’s a good thing that the United States banned monopolies years ago, because Lord knows they don’t have one. So that’s clearly the messaging that they’re sending. And that’s not good, especially for a startup. So I hope that answered your question.

Carl J. Cox 18:07

But I, once again, I love the passion that you have Jim behind what you’re trying to do what you’re trying to accomplish. And clearly that passion is what you’re hoping, hoping at the end of the day is going to resonate to the customers and they’re going to, it’s going to come back to them not only great quality product, but great customer service that they’re going to become you’re hoping it sounds like customers rely because they’re just gonna love what you do on a regular basis. Is that fair? Fair summary.

James Tulin 18:35

100%? Yeah, it’s every founders dream. But it takes a lot of skill. And it comes from inside Carl, you don’t learn how to do this. You either feel it, and it’s natural. And you’ve been exposed to it. But read all the content on LinkedIn, everybody’s saying the same tune. They all are. They really understand what it means. Passion, you can buy it at Walmart, you just can’t do that. You can’t go to Target and go to the passion aisle. It’s either in you, or it’s not. And as I tell my 26 year old, who I’m going to send this recording to, and he’s heard this 1000 times. You’ll never be great at anything, unless you have the passion for what you do. And that I swear to god is 100% the truth.

Carl J. Cox 19:30

I agree. So, of course as we as we know, the title of this podcast is measure success at how are you going to measure success at Oxford Hounds? What is there? Is there a data point is there How do you know that you’ve from a metric standpoint, how do you know that that’s being met?

James Tulin  19:55

Sometimes, you can be over metric And sometimes you look to things to tell you if you’re doing well or not. That are not as profound as something other. So how I’ll know, I’ll know, stupid answer, right. But I’ll tell you how I’ll know. When I, when the customer tells us that they love what we do. And they’re proud to wear our garments, or belts, and they love the way that they’re treated, when they call in. That will tell me has nothing to do with finances. Because if you’re driven by the money, you’re doing it for the wrong reasons. If you do a great job, you’ll get the money that’ll take care of itself. boundaries that are driven by the money, that’s a problem, I would say, Be careful. But the customer if I can exceed our customers expectations, I did a great job.

Carl J. Cox 21:06

Yeah, well, you you from a modern day metric that’s used that it seemed like would really matter to you, but you would want it to be authentic, not just faked. is the net promoter score you may have heard of is kind of the quote unquote, the popular metric. And that’s when you get asked, Would you give us on a scale of one to 10 to nine or 10? Seven or eight or six or less? And you might even have somebody at a somewhere that say, please give us a nine or 10? Well, that by definition is the first start where things aren’t going right. Right when you’re being asked to give better than you know, people should live and breathe it. But what I love about that score, is it is one of the few comparable Net Promoter scores basically saying, Would you be willing to refer somebody else to buy this product, and a nine or 10 is raving fan seven or eight is zero, you get zero points. And when I are taking one point, you get six or less you can negative one point in in the best companies in the world get about a 60 to 65. This is like the American Express’s we refer to, you know, the average company that’s good. The average good company gets around a 20 to 25. Most companies are negative. And and because ultimately they’re they buy it because they have to. But they’re not buying because I love it. And that’s you know, there’s organizations and companies that figure that out. It’s funny. Net Promoter Score is just reflecting who they already are. You know, it’s just a great but but what it doesn’t work is when what what I like to send Jim is when it’s not authentic, when it’s not authentic rating when you have people saying you have to give me the score, because I’m looking for a bonus or I’m trying to get our NPS score, right. That’s ridiculous. Exactly. That’s my point. It’s ridiculous. So it was Yeah, it is it is. And so that’s where sometimes once again, metrics get missed, right, we were measuring the wrong things and how we get there. So we’re going to turn it over to the personal side, because you shared a story with me when we had our first chat A while back. And you’re doing something that I want to do. So I always find people who are successful in their careers, not always, but almost always find out that they are doing something and a personal aspect on a professional sorry, on a, whether it might be exercise or reading or running, who knows what it is they’re sleeping eight to 10 hours a day, or 12 hours a day, they’ve found some things they’re doing in their life that has continued to give them energy so they can move forward. You recently completed something that I thought was pretty awesome. Not something that you typically see, Sony with, with nearly 30 years experience in the workforce, maybe somebody who’s a young person, and they’re 10, you know, teens and 20s. Tell us about what you recently accomplished and how Why did you take that path?

James Tulin 24:00

I assume that you’re talking about my foray into the martial arts? Yes, sir. And I had knee surgery. I think it was in 1997 from playing too much tennis. And I needed to rehab it and stumbled across this gentleman who was teaching this young lady, something that I didn’t know what it was. So every day I would walk into the rehabbing. I stumbled across a walk past this room and there’s this guy teaching this girl. And I came home one night and said to my wife, you know, always because I used to travel frequently with one of the people that work for our company who was a former IBM er, and he was a black belt in Taekwondo. And sometimes guys wouldn’t be called the Bruce Lee. Okay, so my wife said, Well, why don’t you look into this. So, one day I walked into this room and asked if I could watch And he said, Sure. And I don’t know what he’s doing. So, came home to my wife. She said, Well, why don’t you think about trying? Carl, I’m not trying it kind of guy. I’m an all the way kind of guy. I don’t, I hadn’t played golf in probably 35 years and got myself down to a one. I don’t do things halfway. It’s just my nature. It’s like building a company. It’s all the way or it’s no way. So, um, I started to go and watch him teach this young lady several days in a row and came home and said, this is interesting, I’d like to do this. So I asked him if I could join the class for a bit. And he said, Sure, I had no clue about the inner workings of what this was meaning. There are belts to be earned. I didn’t know I was just going in, block chop, what what do I know? So I started to really enjoy my time with him. And he was teaching me I was training with him probably, let’s say two or three days a week, for an hour. So he’s teaching me very simplistic things. And lo and behold, after about eight or nine months, he said, I’m going to invite the master to watch your test. So what kind of test I had no idea I was working towards the next level. So again, not making this a novel, The master comes up, and I go through all the stuff that I was taught. And they take my white belt off and put my yellow belt on. Hmm. So I’m training at a health club near my office. And the Master says to me, you’re going to have to start training at the school, what school. So I didn’t understand the affiliation between my teacher and the master with a school that’s about 30 minutes away from where I live. So I start going down to the school. At the time that I was training with my teacher, I was training with him, at that point, six days a week, twice a day, for turned out to be almost eight years. Wow. And I was going down and training at the school, three days a week on top of that. And the martial arts is a funny thing, because there has to be a line between the owner of the school doing this to feed his family, but to maintain the integrity of the art. So there is what’s called the belt factory where many schools will just keep advancing the students just to keep them engaged and get their money, not so much. By school, it took me seven and a half years, twice a day, six days a week to get my first degree black. And at the same time, I continued on that road, and got my third degree black several years later, but I also trained in a different weapons style, and got to third degree black in that as well. And the higher you go, the more you realize it’s less about self defense, as it is about the internal

draw that you get. And I’ll end it by saying this, as your company is presently raising capital, and this is not a pitch, Carl, for please invest in Oxford Hounds, it happens to be the truth. If If those of you that listen to this podcast, it if you are so inspired, you can go on to our profile on the wayfinder crowdfunding platform. And take a look at our lead investor. Our lead investor is the gentleman that trained me all the way through third degree black. He invested a significant amount of money. It took him five minutes. Why read his testimonial, because he knows that my work ethic and the passion that I exhibited in those what winds up being almost 15 years with him is going right into this company. So there’s no question in his mind as to our ability to be successful. And that’s so help me God a true story.

Carl J. Cox 29:46

Well, no, that’s that’s very inspiring. Jim, for multiple reasons, I think I don’t know if I shared with you beforehand, but I also have this vision I’m still in the same way want to have a black belt in Taekwondo some day, the only belt I earned was the yellow belt at the University of Washington. I was I was taking a class in it. And I got to I was starting to train yellow belt and learn very quickly, I either have to be very dedicated to this or I need to get out when I was sparring with shadow sparring with the six foot four gentleman who put his foot up by my neck three times at about a two inch distance. And I was like, I better get out now or really get in. I got out personally. But what’s interesting is, after I run, finished a couple marathons coming up, I want to re engage in this and there’s somebody’s gonna do another shout out. Where’s john David tour. I went to school with him and University of Washington. He’s now a might not get the correct title but a colonel, our lieutenant colonel in the Marines, and he taught actually martial arts in the Marines. And he actually would teach us in the fraternity, self defense and Taekwondo. So anyways, I just love this personal story and how it also reflects your passion behind what you do. Because it’s it’s, it’s not just body, but it’s mind, right, and spirit all have been put together in the amount of dedication that you put into extraordinary and that your master ended up investing in you and the company says, can’t can’t say enough about that. So

James Tulin 31:25

both of them did allow both the master and my and my teacher, I’ll leave you with this thought. In our school is the master. How many students have you had in your 30 years of being in business? He said he’s probably had between 25 and 30,000 students walk through his door. Wow. 14 got the black, no way, way, way. 1414 only because the amount of dedication and perseverance required. It’s hard, Carl, and there is a moral obligation. And why many of the schools need to be careful when you start elevating your students before they really are ready to be elevated. You are empowering them falsely. And that can lead to being a real problem. Wow, problem was true. 14 got to black out of 30,000, of which I was one of them.

Carl J. Cox 32:24

That is unbelievable. That is a less than one half of 1% if I’m doing the math right here. And and I think it’s even less than that, that that is unbelievable. I and and but I am I let’s see about 15 years, we’ll we’ll have a conversation again. And we’ll see if I get there. I said I don’t plan to get started for a few years. Got to run a couple of marathons in between. This has been inspiring Jim, hearing about your story. One of the questions I ask all my guests, what books would you recommend to others?

James Tulin 33:05

I can’t remember the title. But I read a book A number of years ago, concurrently with just my involvement in the arts. And something I can’t remember was called the journey or the martial arts is a very deeply inspiring, thought provoking art. It’s an art. And it teaches you far more about the inside than the outside. Because if you ask any true martial artist, what would happen if you had you were confronted? Well, I will tell you, Carl, that if it was me, the first thing I’m going to do is look to pick up a weapon. Now, Jen, you trained all these years, to be able to defend yourself with just, you know, freehand right, given an opportunity. If there was a newspaper handy, I would pick it up and I would hurt you with it. So I’m looking for a weapon. So the point is, is that if you have one eye on the destination where you’re going, you have a problem because you’ll never enjoy the journey. And this book, talk deeply about the mental profoundness of what you gain from the arts and how it helps you in every aspect of your life. And I’ll end it by saying this. My teacher that took me from yellow to third degree black. When I met him. He was a personal trainer. He is a massively successful mortgage banker with an income that would blow your mind. Why? Because it’s 100% a result of his dedication to the arts, and everything that he learned from it. From integrity. Two, you name it. But it’s true. So this book really opened me up along the way about the benefit of looking inside and having the right values and morals and doing things the right way. And then you never have to look over your shoulder. I can’t remember the name of the book, Jim

Carl J. Cox 35:26

I, for those who might be listening, I do. I will follow up with the book recommendations, I put that on LinkedIn. So you make sure you send an email to me of that title. Send me your text to me. And I will make sure I the listeners can actually get an opportunity to read that because I think I actually look for the opportunity to read that as well. Jim, how can people learn more about Oxford Hounds?

James Tulin  35:54

Well, it depends upon their level of interest. I’m happy to give you my telephone number and my email address. And they can either call me or email me. My email addresses jim@oxfordhounds.com, pretty simple. And I’m, I’m open to that. That’s probably the easiest way to do it. Lots of times, I’m on the phone and goes into voicemail, and they’ll get frustrated, and so on and so forth. But I answer everything. And they can look at what we’re doing right now is, as I said, we are raising capital and this is not a plug, but it gives you a very detailed background of the company, product, yada, yada, yada. And that can be found at www.wefunder.com/oxfordhounds. So but I would welcome people reaching out to me. I love talking about our business. It’s my life. It’s what I do. And I’m here.

Carl J. Cox 36:57

As Jim this has been very inspirational, very excited for you and in this current growth, for Oxford and just your previous history as well. Jim, just thank you so much for being on the Measure Success Podcast.

James Tulin 37:13

Carl, my pleasure. enjoyed it very much. Thank you for having me.

Carl J. Cox 37:17

Absolutely. And to the audience. We just always like to thank you too, for listening, and wishing you all the very best at measuring success. Have a great day.

Outro 37:30

Thanks for listening to the Measure Success Podcast. We’ll see you again next time to learn from the best. Remember to subscribe now to get future episodes.