#138: Mike Maczuzak (SmartShape Design + Walking Across the U.S. & World)

Mike Maczuzak (SmartShape Design) [00:00:00]:

I've always found it interesting how a passing comment like from my 11th grade teacher could change the course of someone's life. So whenever young people, if a young person calls and asks me to come land see our studio land shadow, I always want to help them because I feel it's so important to take that time because it can be so impactful. That little bit of time could potentially be life changing.

Jeffrey Stern [00:00:28]:

Let's discover what people are building in the greater Cleveland community. We are telling the stories of Northeast Ohio's Entreprenuership Builders land those supporting them. Welcome to the Lay of the Land podcast, where we are exploring what people are building in Cleveland and throughout Northeast Ohio. I am your host Jeffrey Stern, and today I had the real pleasure of speaking with Mike Machuzak, a product designer, early stage investor and founder of Smart Shape Design, an innovative product development and industrial design firm which he founded here in Cleveland back in 1989. Smart Shape's beginnings were richly steeped in this world of industrial design, leveraging Mike's own background and experience in it. However, over time, Mike evolved the firm's competencies and capabilities to cover mechanical engineering, integrated manufacturing and strategic product development across a plethora of industries like medical, consumer, IoT, packaging, digital and many others. Smartshape's client list is a formidable and growing group of emerging brands covering Northeast Ohio's leaders like Avery Denison, Gojo, Diebold, Sherwin Williams, Nestle and many others, including a handful of companies whose stories we've shared on lay of the land, like David Levine of Wireless Environment Land. Subsequently ring and Amazon Chris wentz of every key land. Chelsea monty Bromer of sweat. ID. And as a result, their products are ones that many of us encounter on a day to day basis in the real world. And while we do delve into Mike's entrepreneurial journey building smart shape in our conversation, today, we actually spend just as much time unpacking Mike's literal walk across the United States and later walk across much of the rest of. The world, covering Mike's motivations for why he wanted to walk across the country and other continents, the logistics of how he actually prepared and executed these walks, how he's balanced running his business while walking across the country, and some of the incredible stories the recalled from his adventures on the road. This was a really fun conversation that certainly plants the seeds of inspiration to embark on your own walking adventure and building an entrepreneurial organization that can support that kind of freedom. So I hope you all enjoy my conversation with Mike Machuzak after a brief message from our sponsor. Lay of the Land is brought to you by Impact Architects and by 90 as we share the stories of entreprenuership building incredible organizations in Cleveland and throughout Northeast Ohio. Impact Architects has helped hundreds of those leaders, many of whom we have heard from as guests on this very podcast, realize their own visions and build these great organizations. I believe in Impact Architects and the people behind it so much that I have actually joined them personally in their mission to help leaders gain focus, align together, and thrive by doing what they love. If you two are trying to build great, impact Architects is offering to sit down with you for a free consultation or provide a free trial through 90, the software platform that helps teams build great companies. If you are interested in learning more about partnering with Impact Architects or by leveraging 90 to power your own business, please go to IA Layofftheland FM. The link will also be in our show notes. I thought a fun place to start our conversation could be knowing that you've embarked on this walking journey across the world and also have founded and run a long standing and innovative design studio. What in your mind the relationship is between adventure and entrepreneurship?

Mike Maczuzak (SmartShape Design) [00:04:16]:

Well, obviously any entrepreneurial endeavor will turn out to be an adventure and probably more so than people realize when they start. And I see a lot of analogy between my adventure, any adventure, but particularly this big adventure. I have this hobby of walking around the world, very analogous to life in general, career path, entreprenuership venture. And what I mean by that is, as I think about it, my planning this walk, I had never done it before, I didn't know how much I could plan. But in hindsight, now I know that it's really not possible to plan the whole way. You don't know what's going to come up, what's going to happen. The important thing is that to know where you want to go and then start so you know where you want to go. You want to go somewhere or you want to achieve something. I think the really important thing and then the next most important thing is just to start, figure out what do I do first? All those things that come 2nd, 3rd, 50th, 100 things you need to do. It's really impossible to figure all those out in advance. And it's just a waste of time to try because the path won't be like you imagined. Exactly. So that's one big analogy. So when I talk to young people, some have asked me about that, what did I learn? And that's one piece of advice I say is think more about where you really want to go in life, in your career, in life, with your business. Spend more time thinking about that and less time trying to plan every step of it along the way. Without a destination, without a vision of where you want to go, you won't go anywhere, really. You just wander around and end up wherever you are. Land maybe there's nothing wrong with that either. But if you do want to go somewhere, it's important to figure out where you want to go. And the to elaborate on that, I started out with the idea I'd walk across the country from New York from the Atlantic Ocean at New York to the Pacific Ocean at San Francisco. But somewhere along the way in Utah, I decided to instead go to Los Angeles. So I planned to walk across the country to San Francisco, ended up in Los Angeles and a lot of life land startup ventures go that way. But the end destination changed. But it was still having that goal in mind that set me on that journey and accomplished mean I definitely want.

Jeffrey Stern [00:07:12]:

To unpack the walk itself and your entreprenuership journey with that. But what you just mentioned there brought this kind of detour to mind. If you'll indulge me for a SEC, there's a line and I can't remember which Joseph Campbell book exactly, but I was just trying to look it up but I'll probably butcher it. It's a line that really hit me quite hard though when I first read it and it's something to the effect know it takes tremendous courage to do whatever you want and everybody else has a plan for you. And I ignored those plans and I went into the woods and I read for five years and that actually formed the basis for the entirety of what Campbell's career would become. And I think more and more you see this like anything when you start looking for something, all of a sudden it seems to pop up everywhere and one of those things at least that I've seen over and over again is that the same journey or drive or inner compass versus external compass leading to tremendous success. And this inner compass idea is quite powerful and feels like an apt analogy in the context of what you've done. So when you think about planning and the nature of what you've done from your path to industrial design to more entrepreneurship around that, how did you approach this in your own life?

Mike Maczuzak (SmartShape Design) [00:08:34]:

Well, in planning this walk, I'd never done it. I didn't know what level I could plan so I started to probably plan more than a little more than possible. I quickly realized I can't plan more than a few days down the road and I realized that's not really my nature to want to plan too far ahead. So for me I really found that having a destination allows you to make decisions, thousands of decisions, maybe a million decisions along the way. Every turn you make a decision do I go this way or that way, which is going to lead me to where I want to go? And that's the same in walking across the country or starting founding and leading a startup to where you want to go. It's a constant, everyday, new, unexpected challenges, decisions and it's knowing what you really want, where you want to go, helps to make each of those decisions that allows you to end up there. And in my life I had some initial plans that were different from what I ended up doing, I'll tell you, I didn't really plan to start an industrial design or product design consulting firm. But in the end, knowing what I really wanted to do, which was be involved in more scalable business, I ended up doing that now because I always knew that's where I wanted to get. So when I saw opportunities to move in that direction, I took those turns to get there. So I think that's where it's important to think a lot about what you really want in life, what you really want to go, what you want to achieve, because all the steps, you'll find your way if you know where you want to go.

Jeffrey Stern [00:10:22]:

Yeah. So to play it back, it sounds like the journey from where you are at any point to where you're trying to get and it may just not be a straight line. And it takes its turns throughout that. As you learn things, land, experience things, can you take us through a bit your own journey and where it deviated from a straight line and how it is that you came to be doing what you're doing?

Mike Maczuzak (SmartShape Design) [00:10:48]:

As a young child, I was very project oriented, always building things, designing and iterating in my head. So industrial design was a really good fit for me. But industrial design was not a well known profession at the time. When I was in high school and making a college decision, I had never heard of it. I wasn't aware of it. It was a high school art teacher, mr. Schooley 11th grade art teacher, mr. Schooley told me about industrial design. He said it was like architecture of products. It was a good mixture of artistic creativity and engineering. And I thought that fit me well. I'd been considering architecture because it lent itself more to design creativity maybe, than engineering, I thought. So I looked into it, and I decided to pursue a career in industrial design. I wrote letters to one or several industrial designers asking how they like their work. Land my father took me to meet an industrial designer in the area, and it looked like a lot of fun to me. So that's how I got the idea to pursue industrial design. And I then went to study industrial design in school and graduated with a degree in industrial design and took a job offer in the Detroit area. That first job out of school was at the second oldest product design firm in the country. It was a top firm with impressive clients. They did work designing the interior of the space station, for example. And my first project on my first day of work was designing the front end of a metro train. So I was doing sketches of what that train would look like, and today it looks like those sketches. That was around 1985. I really enjoyed that job. I worked there for a total of four years and a lot of interesting projects. I learned a lot from very talented people about designing products, running a product design consultancy and one thing I learned is that I did not want to start a product design consultancy and it's a good business, very interesting work. I've made a good living at it but it seemed to me that it isn't very scalable. You're essentially selling hours and you only have so many hours in a day whether it's 100 hours or 1000 hours to sell and if you don't sell those on that day then you can't put them on a shelf to sell later. So I was definitely interested in the scalable kind of business rather than another product design firm. But while I was here back in Cleveland starting to figure out what I would do, what kind of scalable business I would start I did some freelance product design to make a living. This was around 1989 and soon I became busy with more work than I can handle and hired a few designers to help. And by the early 1990s I found myself alternating between looking for more good people to help do all the work that we had and looking for more work to keep all those talented people busy. So obviously I ended up owning a product design consultancy despite your best efforts. It's not what I planned originally but actually it worked out well because it put me in a good position to participate in many highly scalable businesses the kind of opportunities which I originally was seeking. So Smart Shape has been a fascinating journey. Not what I planned on doing but we've worked on with so many interesting projects, some of the best companies in the world, interesting projects that I personally like like EV chargers and life saving medical devices. That's very satisfying. And we work with a lot of startups and small companies that are doing some of the most leading edge stuff. Some of the really more innovative stuff is with the startup companies that we work with. And over the years we've invented many new products, produced ideas, land designs that resulted in numerous patents. It's just really interesting work. So even though it wasn't the path I had planned, it's been a fun journey. I went really fast so far.

Jeffrey Stern [00:15:07]:

Yeah, and I think some of those products that you've worked on would be a great starting point to understand what the actual work that you do at Smart Shape looks like in practice. I know David Levine who was on lay of the Land not too long ago kind of went over in detail wireless environment and their journey to Ring and subsequently Amazon or something like Sweat ID with Chelsea Monty Bromer out of Cleveland State. How do you diagnose the work to be done and the actually go through the product development process? What does that look like?

Mike Maczuzak (SmartShape Design) [00:15:42]:

Well, it always starts with a design thinking process of really understanding the user, the need and building. From there we've worked on so many projects over the years with companies that come to us with a problem that they've already often identified the problem. In some cases, though, the companies will come to us land they will have a category in mind and they'll ask us to help figure out what products they should make. And so we'll go through a process of doing some. We'll arrange some kind of user research so that we can observe people doing what they do, whether it be in the or observing medical procedures or observing how people clean their kitchen or bathroom and carpets. And then we'll look for unmet needs and opportunities to invent new products and features to meet those needs. That's what it's all about. Land companies come to us with different at different stages of that. Sometimes they've already identified the need and they've identified a product to make either because of reaction to competitors or a change in technology. For some reason, they've identified a new product to make and they'll come to us to help optimize the design of that product. And it's the same kind of iterative process of divergent, to diverging, to consider all the possibilities and then converging on the best possibilities and then testing and just a process of iterating to learn. Kind of like the journey you learn each step of the way you learn and test your ideas and keep adjusting to move in the right direction in a minute. First I'll give you a background, just the overall kind of scope, land breadth of our work, perfect since we started 19, 89, 35 years ago, or something like that almost. We've designed hundreds of consumer products. We've designed hundreds of rubbermaid products alone and many other products for Hefty Clorox brands, other well known consumer brands. We've designed juvenile products like baby car seats and strollers for Fisher Price graco Darrell, and the largest juvenile product company in the world. Now. Good baby. A Chinese company. They learned that we were behind a lot of what they viewed were the most innovative new designs, so they sought us out to help them. Innovate we've designed vacuum cleaners for Kirby Hoover, eureka power tools for products for Remington and DeWalt technology products for Bosch ABB Honeywell. We've designed healthcare products and medical devices. It's become the largest area of work for us. And we find that particularly satisfying because we're developing products that will improve and potentially save lives. We enjoy that more than designing a new happy Meal for McDonald's or something. So I feel a little embarrassed bragging about all these things. But it gives you kind of a sense of the scope of our experience and that cross pollination of all the different things we do that gives us a big advantage. When we're helping a startup company like Chelsea's Sweat ID, we bring a lot of different knowledge from different product categories and ideas to the table. Most of that work for large companies. I mentioned that's all fee for service work. We're hired to help invent new products and features for those clients and then they own all the patents. But then we do a lot of work where we participate now in scalable ventures where we'll invest in early stage companies like David Levine's Wireless Environment. We invested in that company in the beginning and helped design their first product and the whole series of products after that. That was really early in our venturing into this business model of investing in companies that we knew we could help elevate to the next level.

Jeffrey Stern [00:20:04]:

Right. And that second path is the way to combat your aversion to there's only so many hours in the day that you can sell and start to be a part of what you think of as more scalable business. Right?

Mike Maczuzak (SmartShape Design) [00:20:18]:

Right. That's how I ended up, I tell you. I didn't intend to start a fee for service design consultancy but I ended up that happened and no complaints because it's been really fascinating work all along the way. But ultimately now I found a way to end up where I wanted to go and that is in these more highly scalable know. One interesting thing about that example with David Levine is any kind of product, if I were to take an idea and create a stand up a company around it so many things need to be done well. Even if it's a great idea so many things need to be done well for that startup company to succeed. And you need a team of people doing all those great things that can be done to stand up a company and hire those people. We also need to hire someone to really lead it land see it through the good times and bad times. And that's where I think it's difficult to hire somebody that will stick through all the really rough times and uncertainty and dark days like a founder will. So it takes someone like David Levine. He found the way, he'll find that path to success even though it can be elusive. I have faith in Chelsea. She's leading Sweat ID who we're helping now. And I enjoyed your interview with Chris Wentz, founder of every Key. There are so many difficulties and dark times that it really takes that determination that someone like a founder like Chris Wentz he will find a way. He will not quit. He will not give up or bail or jump ship when things look bad. And I think it's hard to hire somebody that has that kind of determination. That's one of the advantages I see in investing in these early stage companies where they have an innovative idea a good product market fit and a good team. But it's that dedication to persevere that is really one of the big keys to chances of succeeding for these startups. We're still doing the work with the big global companies developing their products but that's all fee for service work, which is good work. We learn a lot and enjoy it. But some of the most exciting things are happening with these startup companies.

Jeffrey Stern [00:22:58]:

Yeah, I mean, something you mentioned there that it just seems to be one of the patterns I keep coming back to you from the whole Entreprenuership journey is just this notion that the idea that a business is founded on is very rarely the idea that the business ultimately succeeds with. And you have to kind of make your way through and persevere and just iterate until you figure out the right solution to the question. And the question is what normally stays the same, but your approach and tact to answering it might change.

Mike Maczuzak (SmartShape Design) [00:23:35]:

Right. The founder knows where they want to go, what they want to achieve, and that may be to end up in San Francisco. They may end up in Los Angeles and walk from New York to San Francisco. And somewhere along the way they change. Land. Decide to go to Los Angeles. It isn't where they planned to start originally, but they discovered a better place to go and they just made all these decisions along the way to arrive.

Jeffrey Stern [00:24:03]:

At that success, which is a wonderful segue to talk about, I think, your walk and journey. So at some point in the evolution of smart shape, there must have been this spark of inspiration to embark on this journey that would set you off walking across the country and ultimately the world. And I think a lot of people have big, crazy ideas, but very few people act on them with the courage and the determination to make it a reality. So at what point in your journey did you feel this inspiration? Land what was that inspiration? Just kind of can you share the whole thought process that unfolded behind your decision to make this leap into a grand adventure and how you balance that with continuing to run your company?

Mike Maczuzak (SmartShape Design) [00:24:56]:

Yeah, well, that was an evolution in itself, how I got this idea. And I had to think back and try to figure that out myself. And I think it was a combination of things. I've always loved adventure. I read a book by Bill Bryson, a Walk in the woods, about walking the Appalachian Trail, and I remember just thinking, that was so wonderful. I just wanted that to just get up and go and keep going. I just love that and figure solve all these problems along the way. That really appealed to me. And then I think watching Forrest Gump, I remember thinking, that's awesome, just keep going. And of course, he didn't need any water or anything somehow, but it just really appealed to me and I started running some marathons. I was never a fast runner, a competitor, but as long as I'm going slow enough, I could just keep going. And it seemed that if I'm walking, it seemed I could just walk forever. I remember I was driving through Colorado on a ski trip and been there a number of years. And whenever I'm driving through the mountains to the ski resorts, I'm always looking at the mountains, wondering, thinking, wow, I bet this really interesting. All the old mining towns and camps and along the way from a century ago, centuries ago, I always thought it'd be fascinating to just see the parts of the world that we drive right past on freeways or fly over. So was it in Colorado with a friend on one of those ski trips? And I mentioned that I had this idea that I want to do a forest gump land run across the country, largely because I want to see all these places in between. So I were sitting there having something to eat, and I was doing the math of if I go this pace and this many hours a day, I could do it. Land I thought three months. And at that time I had a team that was able to really handle our business, handle our clients. I've got an excellent team now that's able to handle clients better than me. Whereas 1213 years ago, the business was I had a really talented team, but they were a more junior team, and everything was sort of dependent on me. So I started the process of building that team, and around 2016, I felt like I had that team land I could do the unimaginable land that is, get away for more than a couple of weeks from my business. So I told my team they received it well. Land this was a great experiment and sort of a launching of this mindset that I really want the business to really want to build a business, not build a job for myself where everything depends on me. So it was 2016, I decided that I'm going to walk from I'll start in New York and I'll walk to San Francisco. And I tried to research and plan, but then I quickly learned that there's just a million there's too many places I can't really figure it all out. So I just went to New York. I went in the Atlantic Ocean at Coney Island Beach and jogged up to Manhattan that day. It was St. Patrick's Day that I started, so I celebrated in Manhattan, and then the next morning I started walking it off to yeah, that was most of the planning. Along the way, I had to figure some things out. One of the things key things I learned about myself was that not to let unwarranted fears deter me. There were things that I was worried about along the way, like when I was in Colorado or in the Appalachians, I was worried about bears, so I thought, maybe I need bear spray. But it was too big, and there aren't anything but black bears, and they're as afraid of me as I am of them. Generally, statistically, it's very low risk. So things that I was worried about that would deter some people. I thought about them, and it's not warranted. So when I got to Colorado, I was asking somebody about rattlesnakes. I was preparing to go through the desert and I was thinking about rattlesnakes and scorpions and asking somebody about that. And they told me how to put my shoes inside my tent when I'm camping in the desert. Don't sleep in a wash where a flash flood could come at a moment's notice, things like that. And I asked this one guy, so what about cats? Aren't there big cats to worry about out there? And he said, yeah, but don't worry about that because you won't see them coming until they're biting your head off. That was comforting, but so I found that things that I had worried about were mostly unwarranted. The biggest thing I worried about was going through the desert and drinking water. Having water to drink. Because I would go 80, 9100 miles without a town in Colorado. I could go 80 or 90 miles in the Rockies. And I had a filter that allowed me to drink water from a stream. But in the desert I wouldn't find any towns or streams or any water source. So that was my biggest fear. I imagined myself, like in the movies, delirious and staggered and they would find my bleached bones months later. That was my biggest worry. But I got a cart. I needed to carry 50 gallons of water to get through two days, like an 80 or 100 miles stretch. So I got a cart in Utah that allowed me to pull the water, 50 pounds of water, plus my camping tent and sleeping bag. And that made it no problem as long as I had the water. It went through Death Valley in mid July and it was in the my God, every day. That's really terrified me. I was almost thinking, maybe I should get a bicycle when I was thinking about it. In hindsight, that really isn't a problem as long as you have the water. And I think entrepreneurial journeys are a lot like a lot of problems seem insurmountable, but if you just address them one at a time, you can figure everything out. That was kind of my thinking, thought process. Just figured things out. And in hindsight, all the problems, things I worried about were not really worth worrying about. I ended up in Santa Monica Beach near Los Angeles. I jumped in the ocean. It was an amazing feeling. I thought that I was finished, that's all I wanted to do was cross the United States from ocean to ocean. So I remember that feeling when I was swimming in the Pacific. I'd lost about 25 pounds just because I burning so many calories every day, I couldn't eat enough. It was an amazing feeling. I loved it and I thought I was done. But after some months went by, I kind of missed that. Adventure. I missed that journey, so I decided, where else should I walk? And I thought about some ideas, and then I decided I'll just continue around the globe. So I walked across in the years after that, I walked across Japan, Korea, and almost finished walking across China until the Pandemic came along, and I couldn't get back in to finish that. So instead, I decided I always planned on jumping in the Atlantic Ocean as my finish line. That's where I started in the Atlantic, so I was going to finish by jumping in the Atlantic Ocean. Since I couldn't get back into China to continue for two and a half years, I decided I would stop waiting and go start at the finish line, land, walk backward toward China. So since last summer, I walked across Ireland, Portugal, Spain, and most of France, or half of France, and that's where I'll go back sometime before the winter and continue from France to Italy and Switzerland and continue my journey. Something I really enjoy as an unusual hobby, but I love it. I look forward to getting back to it's.

Jeffrey Stern [00:33:36]:

It's it's pretty incredible. I can only imagine, as you especially widened the aperture from just walking across America to the entirety of the you as you recalled your adventure there. It's a bit of like a fast forward, obviously, from starting in the Atlantic to arriving in Colorado, to getting to California and the the adventures beyond. But I'm just very curious, what does a day on the road look? Yeah, I think you touched on how you dealt with some of the fear, but how do you manage the unpredictability that comes with such a journey? How did you structure your routine during walks? Is routine even a concept that makes sense in this journey?

Mike Maczuzak (SmartShape Design) [00:34:26]:

Yeah, there is sort of a routine, which is I get up in the morning, usually, like, just around sunrise sometimes. Before, if I had a plan to go a long distance and walk all day and usually didn't plan much, I figured I could find things along the way. But there would be some times where I had to plan a little, bring water, or as I mentioned, had to plan a little in some areas. But the typical day kind of changed over in a few ways over the journey. In the beginning, I had this idea that I would walk 40 miles a day would be my average, and I was trying to do that in the US. I was targeting 40 miles, but I'd have to find a place to sleep every day, and sometimes that would be at 35 miles, sometimes 55 miles I'd walk. So I had to kind of figure my route on where I could sleep. And that was the biggest challenge walking across the country. And when I got to Colorado, that became big stretches, as I mentioned, 80 to 100 miles without any towns. So I bought a tent in Colorado in Denver area started to camp from there to the Pacific in those big stretches. But now my journey has changed in a couple of ways. One is that 40 miles is too far because it doesn't allow enough time for taking a shower and getting something to eat and getting enough sleep. Just too many hours of the day spent walking. And I walk slow because I take a lot of pictures and look at my map and such. Only if I'm running late, I'll jog or run some just to speed it up. So now I try to now my target is more like 35 miles. My average over the whole journey so far is 36 miles, I think. So now I plan a day that allows me to get something to eat in the morning, and I'll eat along the way if I find something to eat, some food or store. Another change is that I don't worry about all the planning that I used to worry about, the little bit of planning that I did in the beginning, I don't even worry about that very much. I used to plan every day I'd figure out where am I going to sleep in the US. I'd figure out where am I going to sleep, and I'd search around for a town where I could find A-B-B or like I said, out west I had a tent and I would carry that with me really all the way to Pacific. Nowadays, I don't want to carry a tent to cross Europe, just to need it once every ten days or two weeks. So I just go and take what comes. And now if I don't find a place to sleep, I just walk all night or I'll lay down and sleep in an orchard or on the edge of a farm or in the woods and take a nap and get up and go and things. I used to be probably be horrified by that idea of sleeping outside without a tent. Now you do it and realize that all the things that I worried about before are not really worth worrying about. It's really not such a challenge.

Jeffrey Stern [00:37:44]:

Yeah, there's a deeper wisdom in that, I feel.

Mike Maczuzak (SmartShape Design) [00:37:47]:

Yeah. Well, one thing that maybe I should have worried about, or maybe I really didn't need to worry about, and give you an example. On my last walk, maybe a month ago, I was walking in France. I had crossed Spain on the Camino de Santiago and entered the Pyrenees mountains along the Spanish French border. And I was walking through these mountains, beautiful mountains, and you could see some snow caps on some of them. One night I was walking all day and I planned on reaching a small town around 09:30 p.m., and I pass opportunities to sleep at like five or 06:00 p.m.. But I didn't want to stop on a long summer day, I didn't want to stop that early. So I walked to the last little town that I would pass through that evening as I walked through the mountains. And in that little mountain town, there was one hotel that showed up on the internet. I could find land. I was betting on that as my plan a. So I get in there around 930, and I went to that little hotel and with my french translation, I asked if they had a room. And they apologized and told me I think they had some kind of an event or family wedding or something. They didn't have any rooms. It was probably a five or six room hotel. So they told me they didn't have any rooms. I decided, well, I'm going to walk. My plan b is I would just walk all night. So I walked all night through the mountains. And there were areas where there were clearings and the sky was the moon was bright, I could see clearly where I'm going. And there were other areas where I'm in a dense forest and I really couldn't see anything, barely see the ground. So I'd use my phone just to get a little bit of make sure I don't step in a big ditch or off a cliff. So I'd use my phone to walk through the woods. Then eventually the sun starts coming up and that's when I would really get tired. And I was looking for a place on that particular night, I was looking for a place to lay down in the leaves. But it had rained that afternoon and the ground was all wet, the weeds were all wet, the grass was wet, even the leaves were all wet. So I was looking for a rock or something where I could lay down and stay dry. The I heard off to my left, I heard some sticks like sound of footsteps, like sticks breaking. It sounded like a person walking. It was too big to be a deer. I saw a lot of deer there. So I looked to my left. I didn't see anything. I didn't look too close. I kept going. Then I heard these loud roaring sounds like a series of those, and then quiet. And then I'd hear another series of those roars. And over about a course of a half a mile, I heard that series of those about three times off to my left. And I eat. All the while I was thinking, wow, that's really interesting. Wonder what that could be. I was thinking, what kind of animal would make that? Do they have bears? And pyrenees? And I'm thinking, I'm in france, so I'm not in alaska or wyoming where I'm going to get eaten by a grizzly or something. So I didn't worry about it at all. And a couple of hours later I was coming to a little small town and I got on internet and I googled wild animals in the pyrenees, and all of the search results were about brown bears. How they used to be prolific there and the they were almost extinct, but they brought some back from Slovenia, the same species, and they were protecting them and they were really multiplying in numbers. And then I was really curious. So I looked on YouTube and looked up, what does a brown bear sound like? And the sound exactly like what I had heard. So then I was really glad that I didn't encounter one. And had I known that at the time, I would have been terrified. I don't know what I would have done. But even that the bear was probably warning me to stay away from it. Or it may have been telling its friends what was on the daily breakfast special, but I didn't know, so I wasn't afraid of it. But had I known, I probably would have worried more than necessary about it. So that day I arrived by noon. I kept walking. I arrived at noon and at a little town that had a hotel. It didn't show up on the Internet, but I asked around. I found a hotel and I got in land, took a nap at 02:00 p.m.. And then I slept a long night. And the proprietor I asked in the evening, I said, Can I pay now? And she said, oh, don't worry about it, don't worry about it. I told her I was walking I'd walked from Portugal and she was born in Portugal and she was, I think, touched by that. And she wouldn't take my money for the stay. It was a beautiful old hotel from the 1860s in this little town. Three rooms, all the had. And I was their only guest. Made a big beautiful breakfast just for me. And I wrote in their little book, their signature book, about my experience and how much that bed meant to me having walked all night. And the she said that she wouldn't take any money. It was a gift. And I said, Are you sure this is worth a fortune to me to stay here? And then she didn't know that I'd walked all night. But I told her this really meant a lot to me. It was worth a fortune. She wouldn't take money. And so I came downstairs. I was going to leave money on the dining room table, like twice as much as the rent or the rate because I just really appreciated her generosity. But she saw the money in my hand and she refused to accept it. And she says, no, it's a gift. And then she saw that my backpack had split open and I was trying to tie it up with straps to hold it together until I could get to a big town and buy a new one. She brought out a backpack, same size as mine, an old backpack that she didn't need, and gave it to me. That solved my problem, a big problem that I had that night. Wouldn't take anything. So just a wonderful experience. And I met it was Anna from Portugal, who grew up in France, and her husband Jesus from Spain. They're just so like angels to that. Was that's one day in the life?

Jeffrey Stern [00:44:21]:

Yeah. It's such a special story. I mean, it's hard to even imagine having traversed such a diversity of terrain and cultures and people. I'm sure you have a whole repertoire of stories to pull from, I guess, if I could, knowing that we'll not even get to a small sliver of them. But in your journey across America, you had mentioned some of the impetus was getting to explore the towns and cities and people that maybe we only think about outside the box of whatever vehicle it is that we're in at the moment as we pass them. What did you find the fabric of America looks like on the ground, and how does it differ from maybe our perception of it and any other kind of memorable experiences in that light?

Mike Maczuzak (SmartShape Design) [00:45:13]:

Yeah, well, just physically, the country is fascinating. How over. Not that long a history. We went from stagecoach stops. A lot of those towns out west are originally where stagecoach stops, and then they became railroad towns, and new towns popped up at certain locations along the railroads. And then all that was bypassed by two lane highways where old motels popped up, and then that's bypassed by four lane highways, and then in many cases, even bigger highways bypass all that. So a lot of our country is bypassed now, and it's just a point A to point B. Land what used to be people used to pass through what's in between stagecoaches or trains, and then even early automobiles. But now all that's bypassed. So that's interesting to see this sort of all over this small towns that just no one goes there unless they live there or have a reason to go there, and they don't drive through there anymore. And that was an interesting journey for me. And then the people there, really nice people, really, all around the world, I met people that were really nice. Never had a problem, really. There were some areas where I felt uncomfortable. Land even jogged through some places to get through faster. And there were some places that I might have felt uncomfortable if I were an immigrant and not a white guy walking through. But ultimately, my experiences, people were nice to me and everywhere United States and also around the world in the US. People, I think, thought I was a homeless guy. And maybe a half a dozen times people tried to give me money, and I would say, no, I'm fine, I'm good. I was like a homeless guy with credit cards in my pocket. Actually, that was an interesting part of it, was to be able to live that way. And I remember walking into a city, and I saw a homeless guy once. I passed a homeless guy, and he had the same kind of cart that I had. And it was a stroller I was pulling that I could pull with a strap around my waist like a chariot. He looked at me, the said, that's what I'm talking about. And we were like Ken. And then I'd see a homeless guy in the city splashing water and a fountain trying to splash water in his face and I could just feel sort of like I could relate to those people because they're out there getting by and that's kind of the way I was. Although again, I had credit cards in my wallet. It was an interesting perspective to be perceived differently. I remember walking into a small town in Maybe, Kansas, where I walked into a store in a little town and I was told I needed to leave my backpack at the front of the store. They didn't trust me just the way I looked. They didn't trust me. I was all dirty and worn, faded looking clothes. And so it's kind of a lesson in how people treat people based on their perception. In hindsight, I was thinking I could have told her I could buy this damn stern. But I understood people have perceptions about you based on how you look. And I looked like a homeless guy. I wore the same pants from New York to Los Angeles, some like running pants and they were all really sun faded and worn. So it was an interesting to experience life sort of from that perception, even though, again, I had no self pity because I could check into hotels anytime I wanted to.

Jeffrey Stern [00:49:14]:

Yeah. With this experience, how has it influenced your plans, your ambitions for the future? What's happening with Smart Shape? Having embarked on this and continuing to go on these journeys, how has it influenced what you would like to do?

Mike Maczuzak (SmartShape Design) [00:49:34]:

Well, it definitely set in stone my desire to always work towards building a team that makes the business self sufficient rather than a business that depends on me. I achieved that enough to be able to go on, start that journey and now it's become even stronger in that way. But this is really cemented in my mind that's the only way I want to live. A lot of entreprenuership, including myself at some points, have a business that you own a business and it also owns you. Going on this journey makes me realize I don't ever want to go back to a business that owns me way more than I own it. And that's a big challenge, I think, for a lot of entrepreneurs. And sometimes there is no easy solution. The business is just going to own you for a while and you've got to do what you've got to do. You got to do what the business demands that you do in order to get through those difficult times. And as we were mentioning before, with entrepreneurs, there would be many dark, difficult times and difficult times where there isn't certainty that it's going to come out to be one of the success stories that you read about. It may be a difficult time that just really never gets better, and you don't know that at the time that you're going through it, but you've just got to do what you've got to do. So I feel like I've done that and I'm past that, where I do have a strong team, but things could change, and I just always want to make sure that I want to keep moving in the direction where I'm building a team that other people will run the business. And at my age, a current focus of mine is to figure out a good way to kind of hand a steering wheel to other people and eventually throw them the keys. So I'm working on that, and I'm fortunate that I have some really excellent people that have that ability to transition into that kind of position of running this business. This journey has cemented the idea that that's the only way I want to be going forward and I want to keep moving more in that direction.

Jeffrey Stern [00:51:56]:

Yeah, no, I think that's at least it feels to me like a pretty powerful point, the idea of owning your business in contrast to your business owning you and how you responsibly, take off all the hats that you had to wear as the founder and entreprenuership and empower the people around you to do that work.

Mike Maczuzak (SmartShape Design) [00:52:17]:

That reminds me of a one thought. We had talked earlier about investing in companies with founders, and that's one thing I like. If I were to start and I may do it, I've got some ideas of some startup starting some companies, and the next company I start will be a SaaS company, most likely. At least that's what appeals to me. But when I invest in companies that have a founder like David Levine or Chelsea or Chris Wentz and others, I feel that it's not my problem to worry about keeping a team and making sure the business doesn't depend on me. That's a given from the start that the business doesn't depend on me to run it. So that's one of the appealing things that instead of me having to build that team land, worry about losing parts of that team. And when I invest in a founder, really, the founder is taking on that responsibility, and that's quite a thing.

Jeffrey Stern [00:53:22]:

I am curious also about the impact of these walks on your life writ large, personally, professionally. How have these unique experiences affected your relationships, both in that personal and professional context?

Mike Maczuzak (SmartShape Design) [00:53:39]:

Yeah, well, the relationships probably are affected by my walks, but also I wouldn't be able to do the walks if I had been married with some young children. I had always thought that I would have gotten married and had a bunch of children. I thought I'd get married and have as many children as my wife would allow, because I think that's great. I love kids, but I never figured out that first part about who to marry, so I never did get married. And that and the fact that I'm my own boss. I didn't have to get permission to go away for four months. I just had to make it possible. So all that put me in a position where I was able to do this. And I feel really fortunate because a lot of people doing good things, raising a family, or they have a job and they can't tell their company they're going to leave for that period of time. I feel real fortunate that my life worked out so that I could do that. As far as relationships, I have a girlfriend now, and she prefers to me not to go away. She prefers me to always be around, but she understands. And she actually went with me to Portugal and walked for ten days on Camino de Santiago. So she may do that again, go on some short sections of a trip. And also my first journey across the US was four months continuous walking. But since then, most I do is a month at a time, and last trip I did in Spain and France was two weeks. So I can do shorter walks that are like going away on a business trip or something like that, family vacation. So I'll continue to do that, and I don't see that being a problem with relationships. As far as the business, it's difficult to get away. Even now, even though I have good people, it's just difficult to get away. But I'm able to make it happen. And I don't ever want to go back to where I can't get away for a week. I can't go a whole year without taking a vacation. I'll never go back to that. It's just not where I want to be. And this journey helped really cement that in my mind. Now, if I go away for two weeks or a month, it's like I went away on business for two weeks or a month or something like that. The world can wait. Nothing really falls apart. And I was actually going to go away land about three weeks ago. I was going to be back in France, walking to Italy, but I postponed that trip, two week trip, just because the timing was a little too busy. And so I have that kind of flexibility that I can adjust as needed.

Jeffrey Stern [00:56:32]:

If someone was contemplating this kind of journey, they wanted to experience it for themselves, recognizing they'll have not the exact experience, but the essence of it, the presence, the holistic nature of it. What advice would you leave?

Mike Maczuzak (SmartShape Design) [00:56:52]:

Yeah. Well, I would encourage anybody wanted to do something like this, walk the Appalachian Trail or Pacific Crest Trail or Camino de Santiago, or like in my case, just walk across country. I would really encourage someone to do it because I think it's a wonderful adventure. I'd give some advice on what to pack, but my advice would be to not worry about all the things that you can't figure out. And my advice would be to figure out where you want to go. Research it enough so you don't miss out on some big key information that you could have easily found. So research it, read about what you can to find out what's probably a good general route, and then just start just like in business with a startup. Figure out where you want to go and roughly how you're going to get there, but then just start. So that would be my advice. And bring just the minimal. Just be minimalist. People tend to pack way too much. Bring just the minimal that you'll need, and you'll find that you didn't really need the extra clothes, just extra money.

Jeffrey Stern [00:58:14]:

Awesome. Well, it's such an amazing thing that you've done, and I hope at some point in my life I can do something similar. But, yeah, I really appreciate you sharing more about your journey. The traditional closing question that we ask everyone, it feels very small now in the context of this conversation, because it's just about Cleveland, but it's know a hidden gem, something that other folks may not know about that they should in our little corner of the world.

Mike Maczuzak (SmartShape Design) [00:58:47]:

Great. Well, a lot of gems in Cleveland. Right next to our office is the Masthead Brewery. I'm there. We call that our conference room B. I'm often there, but it's not very hidden. So the hidden gem that I would like to mention is kind of a place and a different way to see a place in Cleveland. And that is my favorite way to meet people, catch up with business, acquaintance or friend, is to go to one of our local rivers and kayak down through the moving water, down a local river like the Cuyahoga Chagrin or Grand River. I did that a few years ago and I loved it so much. Now I have seven kayaks, and anybody that wants to meet me at a coffee shop or a brewery, I would suggest hey, instead of sitting on those bar stools, why don't you meet me at Peninsula on the Cuyahoga? River and we'll kayak down to Brexville and we can have a lot of chat along the way and probably see a few eagles and know it looks like a completely different world. So I think that's my hidden gem is to see this completely different world that's right here in our area in a unique way. I just love catching up with people that, you know, anybody that wants to join me can reach out, and I've got the kayaks. All you have to do is show up.

Jeffrey Stern [01:00:14]:

That's amazing. Well, in case anyone wants to take you up on that, Mike, what would be the best way for folks to get in touch with you?

Mike Maczuzak (SmartShape Design) [01:00:23]:

Well, my email address is easily found. It's my first initial followed by my last name at SmartShape Design and also LinkedIn is great way to connect with people. You can find me on LinkedIn as well, so send me a note any way you can and love to meet other Cleveland entreprenuership and aspiring entrepreneurs, land aspiring hikers and adventurers.

Jeffrey Stern [01:00:53]:

Well, I just want to thank you again Mike. This was amazing.

Mike Maczuzak (SmartShape Design) [01:00:56]:

Well, thank you. It was a pleasure talking with you.

Jeffrey Stern [01:01:00]:

That's all for this week. Thank you for listening. We'd love to hear your thoughts on today's show, so if you have any feedback, please send over an email to Jeffrey at layoftheland FM or find us on Twitter at podlayoftheland or at @sternjefe J-E-F-E. If you or someone you know would make a good guest for our show, please reach out as well and let us know. And if you enjoy the podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on itunes or on your preferred podcast player. Your support goes a long way to help us spread the word and continue to bring the Cleveland founders and builders we love having on the show. We'll be back here next week at the same time to map more of the land.