The Way I Work: Will Dean, Tough Mudder
The CEO of Tough Mudder is obsessed with company culture and strategy. And with finding new ways to make his customers uncomfortable. (Electric shocks, anyone?)
Gus Powell
Ready for Punishment: About 1,000 racers joined co-founders Will Dean (second from right) and Guy Livingstone (right) in Englishtown, New Jersey, for World's Toughest Mudder, a 24-hour race that is the company's most grueling challenge.
Conventional wisdom would suggest that forcing your customers to endure electric shocks is probably a bad idea. But it seems to be working out for Will Dean, CEO of Tough Mudder, a $70 million company based in Brooklyn, New York. Tough Mudder hosts extreme events, in which participants work in teams to complete a 10- to 12-mile course. They jump into Dumpsters filled with ice, crawl under barbed wire through puddles of mud, and, yes, dash through live wires carrying up to 10,000 volts. In 2012, nearly 500,000 participants shelled out $95 to $200 to compete in 35 events in the U.S. and overseas. A native of Sheffield, England, Dean, 32, worked in British counterterrorism and then attended Harvard Business School. In 2010, he co-founded Tough Mudder with his friend Guy Livingstone. Now, Dean spends his days teaching Harvard case studies to employees and dreaming up new ways to leave his customers bruised, bloody, and begging for more. --As told to Issie Lapowsky
Running a growing business is a lot like playing pool. In the beginning, it's like you're playing without a cue ball. Then, you have a small team, and you need the cue ball. Suddenly, you have a lot of employees, and it's like you're hitting seven balls in a row. You have to hit that first ball very carefully to get that last one where it needs to go. That's my job now.
I get up early, typically around 4:30 a.m., and I try to get most of my work done by 10 a.m. I clear out emails and get my reading out of the way. I commission about two or three reports a week from my staff on things like what our price structure should be next year or what it costs to cancel an event.
By 10 a.m., I ride my bike about five minutes from my house in Brooklyn Heights to our offices. Tuesdays and Wednesdays are the days I'm usually in the office. Otherwise, I'm traveling. We have 110 employees, and it's probably been more than a year since we were all in the same place together. We have operations in Australia and the U.K. now, and we're opening an office in Germany this year. We're always setting up a venue somewhere. Like it or not, when your company gets to a certain size, the way you manage changes. You go from being a manager to a leader, and in my mind, there are only two things a leader should worry about: strategy and culture. Those two things take up most of my time.
Tough Mudder has a quirky culture. Once a month, we have something called Tough Mudder University, which everyone who's in New York attends. It's an 80-minute discussion of a Harvard Business School case study, based on a theme that's pertinent to Tough Mudder. For example, we did a case about Starbucks in the late '90s, when the core customer was a woman in her 30s. But by the turn of the century, it was becoming a wider national brand, and that created challenges. It's the same with us. Our early adopters were very fit 30-year-old guys. Now we have participants in their 80s, and we need to figure out how to serve those people, too. The case method is great from my perspective, because I get to interact with everyone, and it's a great assessment tool.
Every Tuesday, we have a staff meeting and give out awards. Our Kaizen Ninja Award, which is based on this Japanese concept about making constant improvements, goes to anyone who comes up with a great innovation. We also give out a Credo Award every week to someone who really embodies the values of the company. For example, Antonia Clark, our head of social media, won a Credo recently when she went above and beyond her job description and helped out the events team on many of the fall events. Tough Mudder is all about pushing your boundaries.
I spend a lot of time interviewing potential hires. We're growing so quickly that I probably do two or three interviews a day. I consider it a mental challenge to get someone to give an honest answer. I always ask, "Are you a hunter or a farmer?" It's amazing how many people take that question literally. If you take it literally, you've probably already failed. I also ask people what they would do if they had a month off. A central philosophy at Tough Mudder is that experience is the new luxury. Unlike an iPhone, which depreciates over time, memories and experiences actually appreciate over time. So, the applicants who tell me that with a month off they'd go to this festival and that festival tend to be pretty good cultural fits here. That's what we're really testing. Do you have intellectual curiosity, a natural sense of fun, an adventurous nature? Do you not take yourself too seriously?
I came up with the idea for Tough Mudder in business school. I noticed that people were bored with marathons and triathlons. Running's a bit boring. In what other sport do you have to listen to music to make it passable? I wanted to make something that was Ironman-meets-Burning Man, a test of all-around fitness, but in this fun, slightly quirky environment.
We aspire to become a household brand name, so mapping out a long-term strategy is crucial. I speak with Cristina DeVito, our chief strategy officer, every day, and I meet with the entire five-person strategy team once a week. We just started a new business division to try to figure out what Tough Mudder will look like in five years. I imagine we'll have several types of events related to fitness. I can see us having Tough Mudder gyms and boot camps. Eventually, Tough Mudder events will be just one business unit within an overall event planning and fitness brand.
