Gabe Wight on Knowing When to Prioritize Family

Gabe Wight:
That was a big driver and that whole decision was what is a role, what a thing that I'm passionate about and can fit within the current set of circumstances.

Rick West:
Welcome to Push GO, a Plum Podcast that highlights the defining moments impacting how we live and work. This week, we've got Gabe Wight on. Gabe's got 20 years in the CPG world, a ton of time at Saatchi X and Mars The Agency. I can't wait for you to hear his story of really progressing through his career and how these moments within his personal life and his family impacted how he looked at work, what it really meant to him from a career standpoint and how he navigated those times. You're going to love his story. Gabe is also a fantastic father and a husband, lives here locally, a good friend of mine, so I can't wait for you to hear from Gabe.

Welcome, Gabe Wight. Man, I'm glad to have you here today.

Gabe Wight:
Thanks good to be here. Good to see you.

Rick West:
It was exciting to have you come in today, but I love the expression on your face when you came in and you said, "I saved a life on the way in." Just tell the folks. How did you save a life today?

Gabe Wight:
That may have been a significant exaggeration.

Rick West:
A little embellishing a little bit?

Gabe Wight:
A little embellishing, yeah. I pulled in, parked and a car pulled in behind me, and there was a sweet lady who looked incredibly frazzled and said, "Can you help me?" and I thought, what's coming next? Her back door of her car was just swinging freely. It wouldn't latch. It wouldn't close, just swinging freely. She had a child, a grandchild back there and so with the ink pen and a little bit of elbow grease, we got it fixed.

Rick West:
I think if people understand, you kind of MacGyvered it?

Gabe Wight:
Kind of MacGyvered it and-

Rick West:
A little boy scout, Swiss army knife kind of thing. You did the Swiss army knife thing with the pen. That's fantastic. You literally someone today.

Gabe Wight:
Oh, yeah, big time. I should have a blue ribbon or something.

Rick West:
That's so strong. Well, for a lot of folks here, they may know who Gabe is from whence you come. Where was high school? Where did you grow up?

Gabe Wight:
I'm local. I'm one of the few local Northwest Arkansas folks, and so I grew up outside of Huntsville on a small farm. We always had cattle and I went through phases with chickens and rabbits and that sort of thing but grew up in Huntsville and a product of Northwest Arkansas.

Rick West:
Man, I can't wait to probe into this whole cattle to tech. This is going to be really good. So the whole growing up, coming in, but you entered into this business marketing kind of world, so kind of walk us through that career post-school, post-education. Kind of walk us through the career a little bit and then we're going to get into a couple of defining moments in your life and career that had you get into that push go moment. Tell us a little bit about the career.

Gabe Wight:
It'd be probably good to start with college. My degrees are not anything expected for what my career turned out to be. My undergrad is in poultry science. I went to school. I had scholarships and thought I'll be a lawyer. And so I started off political science and did that for a semester and absolutely hated it. I called my dad one day and said, "I'm going to quit school. I'm coming back home. I'm going to start a carwash and a gas station, diversify," and he just kind of, "Well, of all the ideas out there, that's one of them, but you've got scholarships. Why not just try something else for a semester?" And so I went around and at the time, the poultry school had the fewest number of students but the most amount of scholarship money.

Rick West:
That's a math exercise.

Gabe Wight:
It's a math exercise and I thought, well I'll try this and since I had school paid for, they just cut me a check. Well, there was a car payment for me, and so I went to poultry school and just loved it. I fell in love with it, fell in love with the people, the professors, everything, just loved it. And being from a small farm, it made sense that I would, but I just fell into it and then finished undergrad and was accepting a job. I was going to move and was dating a girl, and she said, "Well, I'll just move with you," and I thought, "Wait a minute. I'm not ready for that. I'll go to grad school," and so I went to grad school.

Rick West:
That's a moment. I'm getting ready to get out, said, "Wait a minute. I'm not ready to move on. I better stick in school." That's great.

Gabe Wight:
I went to grad school-

Rick West:
Studied?

Gabe Wight:
Ag Business.

Rick West:
Okay, so you stayed in ag? All right.

Gabe Wight:
Stayed in ag, went AG Business, had a great experience there, finished, and I had done an internship for AG Pharmaceutical Company and they had offered me a job in North Georgia. And then one of the poultry companies that offered me a job, oddly enough in North Georgia as well and both of those were very attractive. I was waiting tables, finishing school. One Thursday night waiting tables, someone came in and said, "What are you going to do when you finish?" and I said, "I'm going North Georgia." So what are you going to do? I said, "I don't know." They're a pharmaceutical company. They've let me take their plane. I'm on the plane with who knows who next Thursday and we're going down. I'm going to spend a week down there and make a decision between the two, and they said, "Have you ever thought about marketing?" and I said, "No."

Rick West:
Marketing? Like ag marketing, cattle marketing? I mean, what are you doing?

Gabe Wight:
Exactly, I thought. No, and they said, "We work for this little agency, Thompson Murray, and we're hiring and you seem like you'd be good at this."

Rick West:
Now, did you know this person at the time?

Gabe Wight:
Yes, I did. Actually, it's Aaron Elliman. Aaron and his wife Allen came in. Allen and I have been great friends in college and Aaron and I got acquainted through that.

Rick West:
So relationships matter?

Gabe Wight:
Relationships matter, for sure. I said, "I hadn't really ever thought about it." And he said, "Well, can you come in tomorrow morning and talk to us?" I said, "Yeah, I'll come in tomorrow morning." Rick, I walked in that office, and now Thompson Murray is Saatchi X, and they're in the buildings that were built over the next couple of years at the time. It was a like Waco title office. The Waco title on one side and Thompson Murray on the other side.

Rick West:
A classic strip mall [inaudible 00:05:25].

Gabe Wight:
A classic strip mall sort of thing and we had two offices that was the office for some of us, and then there was another office over a tanning salon around the corner for the rest.

Rick West:
That's so good.

Gabe Wight:
It was great. I walked in and I knew immediately, if they offer me even close to what I really want, I'm coming here.

Rick West:
What was the thing though? You said there was something. Did you know then?

Gabe Wight:
There was something about that. There was an energy in the place. There was an energy in the place and I walked in and in 30 seconds, I knew this is the place and then I interviewed, and interviewed with Terry Tapone and David May, who you know both of them.

Rick West:
Great people.

Gabe Wight:
I asked David May, I said, "I don't know what you guys do here. Is there a training manual or something?" I'll never forget he got a little pad of Post-it Notes and he said, "Here you go." Nothing written on them. He's like, "Write down what you learn and we'll build it. It will create the training manual.

Rick West:
Truly an entrepreneurial kind of-

Gabe Wight:
Very much so.

Rick West:
... what people are starting. And so you got in early. Were you employee number five, 10?

Gabe Wight:
I was number 60.

Rick West:
So they had some folks, they'd been busy doing business.

Gabe Wight:
Yeah. There was some scale there. They'd been doing some business and they're starting managing outside production of displays and pack out of displays and print material and that sort of a thing. And they needed people to come in and help with what that was going to be. And it was such a great time. And so I came back on Monday, I interviewed on Friday. Came back and Andy Murray was CEO and met him on Monday. And Monday afternoon had an offer. And it was exactly what I had wanted, had the number I'd kind of thought through. And so I went there and that was great. So anyway, your question was more around career, not just what I do.

Rick West:
That's okay. That's a great intro, to help people understand that. And you know I have talked this before, is that relationships matter and you've got to make sure you listen to folks. And more importantly, and we talked about this in our podcast, what is that thing? And this was one of those defining moments that you said, "Yeah, this was the right..." And sometimes you don't know that you know.

Gabe Wight:
That's right.

Rick West:
So did you talk to anyone else? Are you calling dad, you talking to your girlfriend, you was talking to three buddies, you just knew.

Gabe Wight:
I walked in and I knew and conversely, I think that the folks there kind of knew about me. My resume was a little bit different. When I was in early high school my parents said, "Hey listen, you're going to work and you're going to buy your own car. You're going to pay for college, you're going to buy your own clothes. We're raising you to be an adult early and you're going to work." And my dad said, "You're not going to looking for a career right now. You're looking for jobs to pay bills. And so there are a lot of things you're going to want to do in life, but you're going to get out of college and have a career. And so I would encourage you just to explore when you're young. Change jobs every summer, every school year, change jobs."

Rick West:
Great advice.

Gabe Wight:
And so I had the most wonderful assortment of jobs. I sold fragrance at the women's fragrance counter in Dillard's. I ran a bulldozer one summer, I worked at FedEx. I waited tables, I did landscaping. I did so many different things. It was great. I had a professor who said, "On your resume, put all those jobs down." And I put every job down. And at the bottom it was like, you can call any of them. Anybody you want to call, call and see if I'm a decent worker. So I knew from the atmosphere there, they kind of knew from my job history and that I was curious. And I've always been pretty optimistic. And I think there are some things that just kind of you know there's a little fire in the belly on some people and I had that and hopefully to some degree I've kept that.

Rick West:
Well, I love that. So I would take back to the first 30, 45 seconds of our conversation today. You could have dialed 911 when the lady had the car dealer issue. You could have called AAA, could have asked you through and you thought, I've got an ink pen. I kind of think I might figure this out. And I know it's kind of a funny story, but it really goes along kind of your career is that a curious person that is resourceful can get things done. And that's what they saw on the resume. So tell us about that greasy, start with Thomson Murray. Were you with them through the Saatchi X acquisition?

Gabe Wight:
Yeah. Went with through that.

Rick West:
Kind of talk through that a little bit.

Gabe Wight:
So with Thomson Murray, my total career there spanned 11 years and was great. And just still, there's so many of us, so many friendships I have from that still. And so many of us to stay tight. And I've been gone now I guess 11 years.

Rick West:
Andy, Terry, those guys are great.

Gabe Wight:
Just great. And there are times you just wanted to ring Andy's neck, but he really knew how to build a culture and people and grow people and so many wonderful people. And so I started off in this kind of production area, came up through the rings there a little bit, and then a few of us stopped, and this will work into our story I think a little bit later, started a division called Quickturn where it was at the time Thompson Murray, Proctor was our big client and there was this opportunity to do some of these maybe smaller projects one of instead of longer retainer based relationships. And so we started Quickturn up here, then the Saatchi purchase. And then I ended up getting into the account side really grace of God's sort of a thing. I just happened to have some ideas around Walmart and they said, "Well, why don't you be the account person just."

Rick West:
Just like that?

Gabe Wight:
Just like that. And I walked in my first Walmart meeting and they said, "This kid's way too young to be able to be an account person." And I sat there thinking, I really am. And anyway, we had a great run there. Ended up running new business in North America and a book of business and just couldn't say enough good things about the organization.

Rick West:
So at this stage in your career, you're saying, all right, Saatchi obviously, global company, top two or three marketing firms agencies in the world, you can see a long term career. And growing up kind of in the age that you were at that time where you came from, you could see a 30, 40 year career. So you're like, I'm going to stay there forever but I know the story doesn't quite end that way. So kind of walk us through that moment where you had another relationship that said maybe Saatchi your long term career. Walk us through that.

Gabe Wight:
Yeah, I was running new business Saatchi and really the impetus was, it was after the 2008 financial crisis and of course one of the first days to get cut is marketing budgets.

Rick West:
Those are crazy days.

Gabe Wight:
Yes. And publicist who owned Saatchi, went on a hiring freeze and you worked through a retainer relationship with a new client and you have a team that's sorted out already and they're buying this creative person, that creative person, et cetera. And you already have a plan around which are going to come from inside the agency and which are new hires. So when we signed a contract and we'd worked through all that, Andy had moved on and went to the CEO at time and said, "We've got this contract signed." And they said, "Great." And I said, "They want to start as negotiated and let's start pulling the team." And they said, "Well, we can't really pull people because they're all busy-

Rick West:
We can't staff it.

Gabe Wight:
... we can't staff it. We have a hiring freeze." I said, "There's no problem. We'll call Paris." We've done this before, we'll call Paris and say we've got this incremental revenue so we can add incremental headcount. And they said, "I don't know that I feel good about doing that." And I thought-

Rick West:
You have a signed agreement right there.

Gabe Wight:
Signed agreement on the desk right there. And it was just one of those moments and it was like, you know what? If we're not going to staff new business and I'm responsible for new business, I'm not sure there's a role here for me. I didn't turn in a resignation at that exact moment, but that was the conversation that started. Where are we really going? And is there a career here?

Rick West:
A lot of people face that. There are these things that are happening around you and you're smart enough to know something's not right but are you willing to take the risk? Are you willing to wait? So you're in this stage of waiting and figuring things out.

Gabe Wight:
And I would tell people a lot. They would come in and say, "Come into my office, we'd have a discussion of..." And they would be just so stressed and worked up over feedback they'd gotten from a client or from a boss. And I'd say, "Listen, here's the deal. No one works anywhere forever. Either they die or the company dies or they quit, or the company quits them." One of four things will happen to all of us in due time. So it's really, shouldn't be leaving shouldn't be a thing that cause a lot of anxiety. It should be something that should be discussed very openly. And here's kind of where I see the trajectory of life happening. Where do you see the trajectory of life and career happening? Let's have a real conversation about it.

Rick West:
Love that though. That whole relationship piece, and we talk about it often at a field agent is that, if you can have a relationship, you can help someone go to something that's so much better than not having the relationship and therefore something happens pretty quick. So you're having great relationships with folks. I mean, it's obvious, everyone's thinking the same thing, having these relationships.

Gabe Wight:
And it allows an appropriate and responsible wind down. I think I gave my resignation in, I think it was June if I remember right. And I still had some things and I said, "I'm going to leave. Here are the things I think I should finish up." But I was going to a competitor, not competing clients but a competitor and said, "So if you want to walk me out right now, I understand that, but I think I should finish these things up." I ended up staying through September or into early September, but it was because we'd built years of trust of the right thing is going to be done and we're all adults in the room.

Rick West:
But how'd you get the offer though? I mean, how that moment you're with Saatchi, you're driving, they took a chance on you, the ag guy, took you all the way through amazing career. You're on the forefront of this driving new business but how did you make that move? Or who came to you? Or did you go to someone else to make a move?

Gabe Wight:
At the time, and I think probably still so Saatchi was such a revered shopper market. And so we got recruiter calls a lot and it turned out that I got a call from a recruiter and a couple of other folks at Saatchi that were, I just really enjoyed we're talking with the same recruiter and for different roles within an agency. And so I had the opportunity to go to another agency, really through a recruiter and through the relationships with these other Saatchi folks of, let's go do this thing. And we were all very different businesses. Very different.

One individual came to start another agency really not under this other agency, but the owner who had yet another agency kind of disparate things. So it wasn't a like team going and doing something. It was just coincidental on these things. And it was great. It was just great. So I stayed there for-

Rick West:
So you'd left Saatchi joined company A?

Gabe Wight:
I went to The Mar's Agency.

Rick West:
The Mar's Agency and you're driving down that path. Good decent role they took care of you.

Gabe Wight:
I left Saatchi at a, I think a VP level and joined Mars as a SVP-GM and really felt like I had the future in front of the trajectory was very clear.

Rick West:
At least another five, 10 years, right?

Gabe Wight:
That's right.

Rick West:
At least five, 10 years. But that's not what happened, was it?

Gabe Wight:
I ended up there only two years, just under two years and so it was May of coming around toward the end of my second year. And I was in Detroit, Mars is out of Detroit. And I was in my hotel in Southfield which is suburb of Detroit. And my wife at the time, Robin called and said, "Hey, I've got breast cancer."

Rick West:
That was the phone call.

Gabe Wight:
And that was the phone call. And so I called the Mars, Ken Barnett, Rob Rivenburg, I just cannot say enough good about them. They're just amazing folks. And I called and said, "Hey, here's going on." And they said, "Can you get on a flight tonight?" Well, there were no flights. I got on the first one in the morning, went home and the next couple of weeks was literally every day in a different doctor's office. And through that I called Ken one day and I said, "All right Ken." And Ken checked on me every day. Amazing human, and I said, "Ken, I'm going to have to leave." And he said, "Why?" What I mean are my jobs on the road? And I travel and got these offices at oversee and all this. And he said, "Well, haven't you told me that this process is only about an 18 month process." At the time it was, you got a 98% survival rate. And he said, "Isn't it just about a year, 18 months?" I said, "Yeah." And he said, "Well, we'll just carry you for that long. Do whatever you need to do."

Rick West:
Crazy.

Gabe Wight:
We'll carry you.

Rick West:
Don't worry about it.

Gabe Wight:
That is how Ken is. Ken, I can't do that. I just can't do that. And he said, "No, don't worry about it. We'll carry it." And I ended up leaving and before I left, Ken called and said, "All right, what are you going to do for insurance?" I said, "I'm not sure." "Hey, so what if we worked this and this and this so you can stay on our insurance for a little while?" I mean, he's just-

Rick West:
So good.

Gabe Wight:
... so good. Just can't say enough good about him. Anyway, so I left there I think November and I think Robin had been just through her first rounds of chemo. And really what the whole reason for leaving was, I've got to get off the road. I've got to get off the road, I've got to do something. And it was pretty intense in doctor's visits and all that. And I wanted to be there for that. And it was really probably one of the first times I had chosen family over career.

Rick West:
So let's talk about that defining moment. Again, we all face it. Doesn't matter whether you're talking about family at home, your mom and dad, you had a brother and sister, a spouse, child, whatever it may be. That defining moment forced you to make a call and that doesn't mean that you wouldn't have made the call in two years, but that moment you had the push go moment. You had to make that call. Was it that simple? As simple as saying yes to Thompson Murray the first time? Was it just obvious, this is the call.

Gabe Wight:
It was.

Rick West:
Did your wife try to talk you out it? Did any other folks try to talk you out it?

Gabe Wight:
She was, "No." Maybe because I'm a little headstrong in some things and it was very clear that this is what needs to happen done. And Robin was very much like, "Hey listen, go do your thing. Don't worry about this. This is all like. It's yes, it's going to suck but it's going to be fine." And we've got the rest of our lives together and go do your thing. But it just wasn't the right thing to do. And looking back, it's thank goodness.

Rick West:
Thank goodness you made that call.

Gabe Wight:
That's right. But it was the first time we really saying, "Okay, family member." So many times I missed so many of our kids events and things because I was on the road and all that. And it was always, that's just how it was. There was no pressure to make events or no pressure to whatever. It's just I work, my son used to always say, "Dad, are you going to airplane office, your ping pong office today?"

Rick West:
Nice. I like that.

Gabe Wight:
In Saatchi we had a ping pong table. So it was either going to the ping pong office, or the airplane office, and would a lot of times say, "When I grow up, I want to work on an airplane office." And we'd kind of laugh. What really does that mean?

Rick West:
That's good. So they stuck with you stood by your side for that time period and now you've got this 18 month window, where you're kind of working through things. I mean obviously I know where story's going here, but let's talk a little bit more about how things progressed and what also happened in your life that also impacted your career which made a few more decisions along the lines.

Gabe Wight:
So I left Mars in, I think it was November of that year after Robin was diagnosed and went, and was running a small media agency locally. And we had rights to high schools and colleges and we produced school supplies, t-shirts in all high school and college. It was great fun. But it became apparent Robin wasn't going to make it. And after about 18 year, maybe almost two year battle, she just wasn't just going to make it. So I took off, I left there and stepped in as caretaker for her for the last couple of months which was unbelievably rewarding and special. And we just got so close through that whole experience. And when she passed away, she was the best her she'd ever been other than physically. I mean she was so good mentally and emotionally and spiritually, everything was just an and so was her caretaker. And then it was like, okay, I'm all of sudden a single dad. And that's a whole different thing.

Rick West:
The reality set in there.

Gabe Wight:
And even just trying to sort out how do you get kids to school from school?

Rick West:
The two kids at the age at that time were?

Gabe Wight:
They were, let's see, six and eight, six and nine around there.

Rick West:
Still they knew how to brush their teeth, but they wouldn't brush them unless you made them.

Gabe Wight:
That's it.

Rick West:
But you getting single dad. You've had this 18 month, now two year piece. You've got everyone around you trying to support you because remember the whole community is around you. Everyone's trying to-

Gabe Wight:
We were so blessed.

Rick West:
... support you as best they can. But now the reality is I now have to move on. You got to go from there and so what was next?

Gabe Wight:
So I spent some time just sorting through how do you logistically, I hadn't grocery shopping forever. Robin did all that. It's the little things. I hadn't paid an electric bill in a long time and so many of the communities stepped in and started helping with so many of these things. But I went and a good friend of mine, Chuck Browning had he been wonderful. He'd been the CFO at Saatchi or Thompson Murray, then Saatchi we got to be friends then. And he had put together a group that bought an out [inaudible 00:22:11] banded and then bought a few more brands.

And he talked to me for a little bit about coming to marketing and it just wasn't right. But when they bought, they made a couple of other acquisitions and it felt like a... And I went in one day and I mean Rick were friends. I went and it was right after Robin passed away, I was trying like, Chuck, I don't want to do. I said, "If you promise me you'll fire me if I'm not emotionally stable, I don't know what demands or I don't know how to raise two kids on my own. If you promise you'll fire me the second I'm not productive, I'll come." And he still-

Rick West:
I know in Chuck, that was easy decision.

Gabe Wight:
Probably easier on the first Friday, I say you should get out of here now. So I was there and had just a great time. different industry. One of the things I appreciate about that industry is at Saatchi and Mars and everywhere else we had really tight contracts. You go to do a thing, whether it's buy a ream of paper and it seems like you have to have a long contract for it. So we get there and Chuck is in China with a couple other guys and they call, "Hey, what if we give away a truck in a boat?"

Rick West:
How do you do that?

Gabe Wight:
And I was like, "Well yeah, we should do that." And so phone calls start happening and they we deal with Crane that did abandoned edition truck and called Wrigley Boats and Benelli shotguns and all these people and, "Hey, do you guys want to participate in this and donate whatever the truck, the boat, the motor, all these things." And everybody, "Sure we're in." And I was like, "Well, do we send an agreement or anything and-

Rick West:
Now we're good.

Gabe Wight:
... just pick it up. And so I remember the Wrigley boat, they went, the family that owns Wrigley Boats that went out of town and it's about time for us to pick it up and do the photo shoot for the promotional material. And I thought, "Oh my goodness, are they actually going to do this thing?" Nobody had talked to them and nobody get a hold of them. And so finally got a hold of Mike Warden, "Oh yeah, it'll be ready on Thursday just like we said," never signed a piece of paper, nothing.

Rick West:
And it shows up.

Gabe Wight:
Everything. And that whole industry, that whole outdoor handshakes it's very refreshing. Anyway, so did that, I was there for 18 months. Really just, I missed the pace of CPG.

Rick West:
But Chuck and that work helped you get back into work?

Gabe Wight:
Yes.

Rick West:
It helped in the mind, helped you go through great transition, getting relationships again. You Chuck and you could trust each other, fantastic. But you are at this point, you're the CMO, you're driving, you're thinking okay.

Gabe Wight:
It isn't just learning about a new job at the time is learning how to live life. And you know Chuck well enough, Chuck's and the rest of the team there we're just very good about being in ear, giving advice and giving space and being very understanding.

Rick West:
Spell of space. That's a great word.

Gabe Wight:
We'd have a trip with Real Tree or someone and Chuck calls, "Hey, do you want to go?" And there was never pressure to or not to. And what are the kids doing? I can't tell you how many times a kid went to the office with me. How many times they went on trips with me. It was the very welcoming in a very soft landing pad to get back into figuring out life again.

Rick West:
Wow. So if I look at life for you now though, so if someone met you today and didn't have this backstory, they see Gabe, this tech guy, Webata, married, baby. Just kind of give us an update. So what's going on in your life today? Talk us through the family side, which is important but also from the business side, how did you go all through those scenarios working with agencies? You're running a tech company. I mean, how did we get here?

Gabe Wight:
Well I think you said start the family first. Met a wonderful lady. So I had a friend, I'll make this really short, I promise. I met a guy, could not remember his name, but I had a banded hat on. He said, "Do you like to hunt?" I said, "Yes, I love to hunt." John David Bland, who you know.

Rick West:
Another great human being.

Gabe Wight:
Awesome human. He said, "Do you have any kids?" Yeah, I've got a son. "You guys want to go hunting with us sometime?" I said, "Yeah, sure." Well I'm thinking like duck hunting at locally here at the lake, whatever.

Rick West:
Southco man.

Gabe Wight:
One day he calls me and he is like, "This is John." I'm sitting there thinking, who's this again? And he said, "Did your son still want to hunt?" I said, "Yeah, sure." And he said, "Meet me in Carlisle Thursday." What? He said, "Yeah, we'll come back Sunday." So I went home, I'm like, "All right Eli, here's the deal. Do you want to go? I think it's like a father's son thing.

Rick West:
You need to want to go.

Gabe Wight:
And he is like, "Yeah, I want to go." We go down there. Eli's the only kid, bunch of guys. We had the best time. And anyway, so John David after that trip said, there are a couple people I want to stay up with. I said, "I'm not interested." And one was in Little Rock, one was luckily here.

Rick West:
He's not a take no, for an answer kind of guy.

Gabe Wight:
That's the thing.

Rick West:
He'd already made the decision.

Gabe Wight:
So finally I said this after a few calls and I said, "All right, if I agree to take one of them out, will you stop bothering me?" And he said, "Yeah, sure." So I said, well I'm going to Nashville for whatever and give me the phone number from one in Little Rock. He just give you the number like that? "Yeah, give me the number. I'll just call her up." So he did, called her up and we're now married and have just over one year old

Rick West:
Just like that. A little bit that cunning.

Gabe Wight:
Just like that, man. She's wonderful. Does a great job. And I've been married almost three years now. Where does the time go?

Rick West:
I know, it's crazy.

Gabe Wight:
And so that family that and then Webata. I love this world of E-COM. I missed CPG, I missed the pace of CPG, I missed food club, mass drug, all of that where I cut my teeth.

Rick West:
And that's a sweet spot. You realized that was really a sweet spot for you.

Gabe Wight:
Yeah, I just really like it. Which is kind of weird, but I just like it. But this whole world of E-COM was coming around and I worked in Walmart stores when I was 16, 17, when they were just launching or trying to determine if they're going to launch super centers. And we used to get a lot of exec visits and they would say, "All right, this food thing's the dumbest thing or it's the smartest thing." It's dumb because there's no margin, the spoilage all this stuff

Rick West:
It's everyone needs milk and bananas, so why not put on there?

Gabe Wight:
So 10 years later, we're at the year beginning meetings and all this and all they're talking about is how do we get people to cross the aisle? Everyone shops us for grocery but not anything else. How do we get them to across the aisle from grocery everywhere else. And then E-COM comes around and they decide, let's do this OGP, this curbside pick up this food through E-COM curbside pickup. And again, half the people are saying this the dumbest thing. There's no margin. We have to staff people to pick the shelves, all this stuff. But you could just see this happening again, this pattern happening again where it's like, wait a minute, who wants to go through this store to get a gallon of milk? Not me. There are things you want to shop for, but then there are the needs and I'd rather you just get the needs.

Put in my trunk go. So that felt like real opportunity and having run E-COM or E-COM report up to me at Bandit, the data isn't there in the same way to run your business, your E-COM business through brick and mortar retailers. It is if you have your own E-COM site. And so I recognize there's an opportunity to start providing some of that data and some of those services to help people grow their business. And even to understand how's my business doing on Walmart, Target, Kroger, et cetera. And then how do we actually go and grow that based on what that performance is. And that's been the last two and a half years of my life, it's just been so much fun.

Rick West:
That's so good. Again, it says somebody's looking outside looking and you're like, well, you're successful and this working out, everything's great. We all have a history. So thanks for sharing your history today.

Gabe Wight:
And let me back up. One point of that is, one of the reasons I started Roberta was just the need for flexibility. And I was still a single dad. I wasn't married yet. And it is someone's got to be, if the nanny can't pick up the kids, it isn't okay to say, well, they'll just sort it out. And so it was this need for flexibility. And really it goes back to that learning and practicing choosing family first or getting a family within that priority set and knowing that all of a sudden I'm the last resort. And for so many years with Robin, she was the last resort. But I'm the last resort, which is a wonderful place to be, but also is I needed that flexibility to be able to work where I needed to be able to pick them up when needed.

I'd been coaching baseball and that sort of thing and really didn't want to give that up. I really didn't want to get back on the road and I enjoyed all that time traveling, but I sure enjoy the kids. And so that was a big driver and that whole decision was what is a role, what is a thing that I'm passionate about and can fit within the current set of circumstances?

Rick West:
There are more than a few folks that know you or want to spend more time hanging out with Gabe. How can I engage here? If someone wanted to find you, are you a LinkedIn guy? I mean, don't give your cell phone. Don't do mobile right now, but what's the best way for someone to get a hold of you talk business life, whatever it may be.

Gabe Wight:
Really LinkedIn. Now that doesn't mean I'm great at checking it.

Rick West:
That's okay.

Gabe Wight:
But I am terrible about social media. And so they can access us at Webata through the website experts Webata.com and that will some point filter up to me and or LinkedIn, but don't expect a response the same day.

Rick West:
Got it. Fantastic.

Gabe Wight:
I'm more of a 72 hour LinkedIn kind of person.

Rick West:
Listen, that's okay. You have to have a process in place to be able to make that work. Gabe man, thank you so much. Really enjoyed it today.

Gabe Wight:
Good to see you.

Rick West:
Look forward to next time.

Gabe Wight:
Thank you. Same here.

Rick West:
Thanks for listening to another episode of Push GO Plum Podcast. We had a great time with Gabe Wight today. As always, if you need more information about this episode, you can go to the show notes or just go to listen.plumshop.com. You can get more information there. Make sure you leave a review, subscribe, tell your friends. Really important to us. And until next time, have a great week.

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Gabe Wight

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