#85 - From memory to mission: Aro's journey to reconnect families

Joey Odom (00:03):

Welcome back to the Aro podcast. Hey, it's your good friend, Joey Odom, co-founder of Aro, and today is a very, very big day. It's a big day for ro. I believe it's a very big day for you as well. And so today we're going to do something a little bit different's, actually a lot different from what we normally do today. I'm just going to tell you a story, a story that I hope you really enjoy, and it is a story at its core, it's a story of belief. It's a story of what happens when you believe, when people around you believe. So just sit back for a few minutes for this story of belief. Ro has three core values. The first one is we get things done, two, we believe, but the bedrock beneath all of that is that we believe. So I want to take you back about 40 years.

Joey Odom (00:57):

That's right. I'm 44. It's hard to believe. When I was four years old, I was sitting in my home looking out the front window and a navy blue Buick pulled up in the driveway and out of the navy Buick steps this giant of a man jet black hair, wearing a suit, carrying a briefcase, and it was my moment to pounce. So I run down the hallway, I run out the front door and I tackle this man. Here I am four years old, and I tackle this giant of a man, and he grabs me and he picks me up and he says, Joey, I missed you. He said, how was your day today? It was my dad. Then my dad did something. He did what I felt like was every day. He went and changed into his superhero costume. And for my dad that looked like six inch in seam shorts, called 'em coaching shorts, he had his tube socks pulled up to his knees and he had a T-shirt on.

Joey Odom (01:55):

We went in the backyard and we played catch, and he was the superhero to me. And every day he did this. Now, looking back on this time, I realize it was a stressful time for my dad, and he was working on a business at times that business was struggling. He probably had stress upon stress, upon stress, it probably would've been a lot easier to go sit and drink a Shasta. My dad's not a drinker, so go drink a Shasta watch tv. But instead he was with me. See, he believed, my dad believed that his time with me was more important than his stress, that that was the most important thing. So for the rest of my life, my dad never missed a basketball game. And by the way, in his business, things got really tough at times. Very, very tough in thinking about what I know now.

Joey Odom (02:44):

I don't know how he stayed engaged like he did, but he had this core belief and he always modeled this core belief that being with family, being with me and my brothers and my sister and my mom, that was the most important thing. So let's fast forward. Here I am, this 4-year-old boy, Joey has now become a dad, and my son Harrison was five years old. And some of you may have heard this story, but my son, Harrison was five years old. He was playing his very first soccer season, and Harrison remains just the sweetest, greatest boy in the world. He's 16 now, but at that time was he's playing his first soccer season. He was not the most successful soccer player. I like to make the joke that the real successful soccer players seem to be in some kind of work release program. Maybe they've just gotten out on parole, they live in a halfway house, they're aggressive kids.

Joey Odom (03:30):

Harrison was not the aggressor on the soccer field, but just like we did every Saturday, my wife Kristen and I, we lugged out the lawn chairs, had our daughter Gianna with us, and we sat on the sidelines to watch Harrison play a soccer game for the next hour. And this felt like this particular Saturday. It felt like a pretty ordinary day until something really truly extraordinary happened. And it happened about midway through Harrison reared back his leg. He kicked the soccer ball. And this picture, and maybe you can picture it with me, this picture is almost like a slow motion movie. You can kind of hear this dramatic James Horner music in the background as he rears back, as the ball rolls across the grass into the back of the net for Harrison's first soccer goal. And everybody went crazy. These sweet parents knew that everybody on the team had scored a goal that year except for Harrison.

Joey Odom (04:23):

So this was a great moment, and they went nuts, and the coach lifted him up and the coach went nuts. But Harrison did something right in between that ball hitting the back of the net and his coach picking him up. He did what I believe five-year-old boys would do in that moment as he turned to the sidelines to lock eyes with me, to see the smile on my face, to see the pride on my face and share this truly magical moment together. And it was magical except I missed it. I missed every bit of what I just described. You see, when Harrison looked over to the sidelines, all he saw was the top of my head as I was looking down at my phone, and I missed that entire moment, and I had this realization in that moment, you think about what we do to build a family.

Joey Odom (05:10):

You think about growing up and you imagine who your spouse is going to be someday. And you imagine that moment and then you hope to have kids someday. And a lot of people go through a bunch of difficulty getting pregnant, and you think about the actual miracle of childbirth, all the stuff that has to happen beginning to end for a child to be born. And then you go through a labor. My wife had an 18 hour labor and it was just a brutal, brutal day. And so we go through all these things, then we find ourselves subverting those relationships we've hoped for and prayed for all of our lives, and it's been with our phones. And I knew, again, this is no demonization of phones. If you've heard us talk before, we don't really demonize phones. It's just a matter of fact of where we are today that those things are getting in the way of the things are most important.

Joey Odom (05:57):

And that was my realization in that moment. I believed that something was wrong with my relationship with my phone, and I believed maybe I just hoped at that moment, maybe I didn't even have the belief yet. I just hoped that it could look different. I just hoped that this isn't what life would look like for me. So little did I know a couple miles down the road, there was a guy named Heath Wilson who lived in the same community we did in suburban Atlanta. It was called East Cobb where we lived. And so Heath was at the top of his game. Heath had founded a business, a financial tech business years before, and he was on the verge at that time of selling that business. And by all appearances, everything was great that he had everything, but he felt this same discomfort that this phone was getting in the way of his family, that he was so hooked on work that something was wrong.

Joey Odom (06:54):

So Heath and I met, and you've heard me talk a bunch about Heath. Heath and I met in 2014. We met at a small group at our church, at a seven series of Buckhead church in Atlanta. We happened to get seated next to each other and we immediately connected. And I tell a story that Heath, everybody was there in Buckhead. It was a Thursday morning, everybody wearing your Navy blazers and that kind of thing, except Heath. Heath was the only guy not wearing what appeared to be a Navy blazer. He was just wearing a hoodie and I thought he was unemployed. I was actually sure he was unemployed. Then I realized what he did, found what he did, and realized that he was very far from unemployed. I'd like to also say there's a fine line between unemployed and entrepreneur. So he was the entrepreneur.

Joey Odom (07:38):

So Heath and I got to know each other through that. And it was a few years after that that my soccer story happened. There was a few years after that, I got a text from Heath and it was out of the blue, and we had been in doing a small group together. We weren't super close at the time, but this text said, Hey, I've got an idea. I think it can be a big idea. Let's get together and talk about it. So we went to breakfast and Heath told me about this idea he had, and it was based on this belief that our phones were getting in the way of the most important things in our lives. And Heath made a comment that has stuck with me forever. He said, I'm going to spend a lot of money to solve this for my family. We went into all the detail on what was going wrong and how it was impacting us.

Joey Odom (08:29):

And so he was just explaining this idea and I said, okay, I'm in. And he kind of said, well, you're in for what? I said, well, I'm in. So I don't even know if Heath had a business plan yet for it. He'd written kind of a manifesto on what happens on his belief if the world could look different and the problem we had with our phones, but I don't even know that he was actually saying, let's start a business. I think he was just saying, what do you think? And my answer was, I'm in. And it's because he believed his family could look different, and I caught it immediately. I caught onto his belief that one thing I believe is that belief is contagious. The belief is contagious. And I immediately caught it that I caught that belief that he had. The idea was not just for Heath, that hey, what if the world could look different?

Joey Odom (09:16):

He actually did have a specific idea. He said, what if we built a box to put our phones in? And yes, I understand how silly that sounds. What if we built a box to put our phones in? But it was more than that. It was if we put our phones in a box and then what if it automatically connected to an app and that app could track the amount of time the year away from your phone. So that was the belief. The belief that if we did that, that would turn to change and the difference with the way we relate to our phones. So we began at that time kind of ideating. We had probably a year of just text messages and random lunches and talking about this idea. And then as we all know, in March of 2020, the world changed. So in 2020, the world changed when Covid hit and all of a sudden we were all at home, and Heath and I took that time to sit on his back porch, what felt like every day ideating.

Joey Odom (10:18):

And that ideation became plans. And I laugh at that time. I read through, I keep a five-year journal, and so I can see what's fun. I can see all those, the discussions we were having, and I laughed because it was every day was like, oh, what a monumental day for what that business, what we called it at the time was smarter. What a monumental day for smarter. But at the time, it was in this fragile idea stage. Sarah Blakely, who's the founder of Spanx, she talks about this when you're at that fragile idea stage and to steal a line from gladiator, just that idea stage, that anything more than a whisper and an idea would vanish. But we kept talking about it with this belief that maybe we could do something about this. So that ideating turned into a beta test. We said, okay, we are convinced we think this thing might work.

Joey Odom (11:09):

So what if we began to test this? So we got up 30 families and they tested this box and this app that we had built, I say we had built that. Other people had built that we had the idea for. So this beta test, it turns out that other people were struggling with their phones, and it turns out that other people were seeing the benefit from this solution that we had seen for ourselves as we had tested it. So I did something a little bit crazy is I left a career, this was about three and a half years ago. I left a career in commercial real estate that was going great. That was the job that I was going to have for the rest of my life. And at that time, the commercial real estate market was as hot as it could be. So I got a bunch of looks and I got a bunch of confused questions of, okay, so this is a box for your phone.

Joey Odom (11:59):

And I had, of course, if you have good friends, hopefully they make fun of you a bunch. I got made fun of a lot by my friends, but I believed, but Heath believed we believed, not just that it could change our families, we were already seeing the fruit of that. Not just that it could change some of our friends' families because we were already seeing a bit of that. We believed that we could help change some families all around the world. And we believed, and before long, a guy named Clay and a guy named Rich and a guy named Brandon and a lady named Paige, a lady named Shay, a guy named Jordan, a guy named Cade, they believed too, and they joined what was then Ro, what is now ro. They joined with this core belief. They believed that this thing could make a difference in the world.

Joey Odom (12:50):

So they left careers, they left great careers, they turned down investment banking jobs, all because they believed. So here's something that we believe as a team at Aro that over the last 17 years since smartphones have become ubiquitous, a lot has changed. And things, if you look at it on the surface, look very, very bleak. And I think that we're at a crossroads. And what we do next is what's critical. So we could very easily just resign ourselves. We could just say, this is the way it is. The kids are always going to turn up this way, that looking down at their phones instead of looking up at each other, that's just the way it is. And there's nothing we can do about it. So we could accept that. And I truly believe this. I truly believe the future could look awful. And I'm not saying that with any pessimism.

Joey Odom (13:37):

I'm just saying that with realism. I believe that without action, that the future looks really, really, really bad when it comes to relationships. But I believe that you, that we believe we won't let it go that way. I believe that we're ready to make a change that will impact generations, that we can change things. Right now, our friend Andy Crouch talks about real change. Lasting change that happens over three generations. And I believe this generation right now because we're at a crossroads and we know the damage it's doing. And I believe that we're saying, I think we want better for ourselves and for our kids and for our families. So I believe that we're going to be the initiators of multi-generational change. We couldn't be more grateful for Jonathan Het in writing the Anxious Generation because it's elevated this conversation. It's elevated this conversation to a point where we say, well, we have to do something about this.

Joey Odom (14:29):

So that's where we are right now. So the Aro approach is this, other people are working and other companies are working. We applaud them to solve this issue that we have with phones. But we're looking at this purely on a relationship basis that we believe we have a relationship with phones that is defined by our constant proximity to them that we have this core relationship with our phones. And so we're saying, what if we address that core relationship with our phones, that if we address that, then it'll change our human relationships as we address our phone relationship. See, we believe that when you change your relationship with your phone, you change your relationships with everyone around you. And we have this crazy vision of the world, this world we want to see. And that's to create an entire generation of intentional families. We do believe that we can change the world, but we believe that starts with the individual world in your family.

Joey Odom (15:25):

And so we set out to do that. And over the last three years since we've launched, Aro has been a hardware business. We sell a box that comes with an app membership. And we found, and this has been the fun thing, is we have found thousands of families love Aro, that thousands of families have that silly box that's a beautiful, beautiful design forward box that lives in their home. And we found that that has made a major difference in the lives of thousands and thousands of families. And we have been purists, I think I especially of all of the team have been such a purist that it has to be this physical place for your phone, this physical representation of your family's values that you put your phone in there and automatically connects to an app. But our customers and their infinite wisdom begin to ask for something.

Joey Odom (16:13):

They began to ask for the ability to quote, go Aro, to go Aro without having to have the box. What about when you're traveling? You've built up this streak of days away from your phone, but what about when you're traveling? I don't have my box with me when I travel. We actually even, funny enough, we had customers telling us they were traveling with this box that is not a light box, this is not a small thing. They were traveling with it because they didn't want to break their streak so much. And they asked for it. They said, can we please have a software version? Can we please would this work just as an app? And again, we resisted, resisted, resisted. I did at least. And then we tested it and it turns out that it's pretty darn effective. This is the Aro flip. This is something that our team came up with that is quite brilliant from the brain of Brandon Smith.

Joey Odom (17:01):

Our CTO ro flip is you tap a button, you flip your phone, and it begins to track the amount of time that you're away from your phone, just as if it were in the Aro box. We actually kind of call the Aro flip. We say it's the new flip phone. So we were forced in a spot because of how well this worked. We were forced in the spot where we had to completely upend our business model, completely upend our business model because we saw that this software version of Aro could work. And so that's where we are today. So when I say this is a big day for Aro and it's a big day for you, it's because Aro is now a software led company. And again, that may not sound that big to us. It's huge because our paradigm has been a hardware led business with an app today it's a software led business with an optional hardware component.

Joey Odom (17:51):

So we always wanted, here's one benefit is we always wanted Aro to be accessible to the masses. You would be shocked at how much it costs to build a box. You would be absolutely shocked to see how much that costs. And as a result, there was just some natural cost prohibitiveness to getting this to the masses. And all of a sudden we have this software solution that is available to the masses. Now the box is part of Aro, and I think the box is a great way to level up, but this is a new era for Aro in addressing this problem. Aro is available as an app and it will change your relationship with your phone. It will help you break that constant proximity to your phone. So we gamify the experience of being away from your phone. And here's the cool thing in a software led business is it's only getting started.

Joey Odom (18:39):

We have a full team dedicated to constantly iterating to make it great and really to make sure that it's nailing this monster, our attachment to our phones that it's nailing this monster between the eyes. Here's what's cool about it. The average Aro user using Aro flip averages two hours a day physically distant from their phones. The stats tell us that 91% of us have our phones with us 24 hours a day, and all of a sudden we have thousands of people spending two hours a day physically distant from their phones. And do you know what that equates to? Here's what's cool. That two hours a day equates to 30 days, one month physically distant from your phone every year. That's one extra month of relationship. That's one extra month of focus. That's one extra month of time together with the people who are most important to you.

Joey Odom (19:28):

And here's the cool thing. Today, it is available to you to try for seven days absolutely free. And this message is not a sales pitch, but this is available to you right now to try for free. For those of you who said, Hey, I don't want to commit to a box, it's available to you today to try out, and I believe this will change your relationship with your phone. And I believe that when you change your relationship with your phone, you change your relationship with everyone around you. So I don't want you to overthink this one. Go ahead and try this today for seven days and let me tell you why. Let me really tell you why. It's because each of us, you, I, everyone around us, we are writing a story. I told you the story of my dad being fully present when I grew up.

Joey Odom (20:18):

I told you the story of me missing a moment with my son, Harrison. We're all writing a story. I want to tell you one quick story. This is an email I got from Dustin the other day about ro. I'll read it to you, Dustin. Dustin said, thanks a lot, Aro. I thought this would be a good experience, but I didn't realize how much it would mess up my daily rhythms. It's a good start, right? Here are some things in my life that I'm blaming you for. One, I forgot my phone at a restaurant the other night because I was so engaged in conversation with my wife that I forgot I had a phone. Two. I woke up way too early the other morning because I got so much peaceful rest the night before because I didn't have my phone to keep me up at night.

Joey Odom (21:01):

Three, my kids have been forced to spend so much time with me because I'm fully focused on them when I'm home and I'm afraid they might get tired of me. Four, my wife has my full attention at home and especially after the kids go to bed because no phone's in the bedroom and I'm not sure she can handle it. So thanks a lot, aro. Seriously, thank you. How about that? Heath and I talked way when we were in the back porch Covid days, talking about smarter at the time, what would become ro. We talked about the day that somebody may join Aro or purchase an Aro box and we didn't know them, and what if someday we heard a story of this changing somebody's life and changing somebody's family. I get a story like that from Dustin. We get these stories every week and it's a dream come true.

Joey Odom (21:53):

I mean that I don't mean that dramatically. It's actually a dream that we had that has come true. That happens every week. So that's a story that Dustin's writing with his family. Let me tell you the story that I'm now writing. Again, I missed the soccer goal and it would've been easy at that moment to just resign myself. But I've decided to write a different story and I'm writing a different story for my son Harrison, writing a different story for my daughter Gianna. My story now is completely different. This story that I have now, I really can say this. This is a story of closeness in my relationships with them that I actually am fully present. I'm missing the mark certainly on a daily basis, but those are much fewer, much farther between. I'm writing a story with my wife, Kristen. I'm writing a story with her that she always feels beloved, that she knows when she talks about it, when she talks about me and she thinks about me, that she feels beloved.

Joey Odom (22:46):

That's the story that I'm writing in my marriage. I'm writing a story with Harrison that as he gets older, that he knows that dad's there for him. He knows that I'm always there for him. He knows that I love him, that we are best friends as he gets older. He is 16 now. I'm writing a story that says when he calls me someday and he says, Hey, this girl I just went out with, this one's different that I'll be there to celebrate it with him, that I'll be there with him as he begins to start his family. I'm writing a story for my daughter, Gianna, who's 14 now that someday Gianna's going to tell us that we're going to be grandparents and my baby girl will start her family and I'm going to be fully present for that and that we're going to have the relationship and the depth of relationship, that she's going to be able to tell me everything and talk with me about everything, about her hopes and her dreams and her fears, and then I'm going to be there for that, and that starts today with a story that I'm writing.

Joey Odom (23:47):

I know that someday this story that I'm writing beginning today with creating full presence by being distant from my phone and being there for the ones around me, I'm writing a story that someday I'm going to say goodbye to this earth and I'll know that I savored each day, that I'm going to know when I said yes to belief that I said yes to changing things that made a difference, that I initiated multi-generational change. When I put aside this biggest distraction in my life and I chose presence instead, what story are you going to write? What if you started today? Again, when it comes to Aro, if there are a bunch of different ways you can engage, we're launching a nationwide digital Fast. That's digital Fast 2020 five.com. That's an early next year for churches to participate in. If you're part of a church staff, we have a church staff wellness program to provide for your church staff.

Joey Odom (24:44):

We have a corporate wellness program if that's something you'd like as well. If you're an organization where wellness is important to you, Aro has a solution for that. But for you, you individually, I do want you to start today. I want you to take that next step and not overthink it, and here's why. And I told you, this is a story of belief and here's what I believe. I believe in your family. I believe in the influence you, whether you are mom, dad, daughter, son, grandma, grandpa, whomever you are. I believe in your influence on your family, that you can change the culture in your family by making this change, by changing this relationship with your phone, by setting aside this greatest impediment to relationship and being fully present in your relationships. I believe that God created this world and then he did something that's a little bit crazy.

Joey Odom (25:37):

He entrusted it to us. He entrusted it to us to steward this world that we have the opportunity to steward these things in our hands. There's nothing greater that we can steward in our hands than our families, and that begins with us. I believe that we can mess up a lot of things in life, that we can do a lot of things wrong and we can cover it all up with our full presence. I believe we can't be fully present when we're holding a phone. I believe the term Al means to notice or to turn towards. I believe we can't turn towards fully the things that are most important to us physically or emotionally. When we're holding a phone. I believe that we need some help putting this thing down. It is hard to put our phones down and I believe we need some help.

Joey Odom (26:25):

I believe that when we do put it down, that magic happens. I believe that we have this amazing opportunity to model a great relationship with our phones for our young kids when our kids are young, even before they talk, for us to model something normal for them, and that normal is our full eyes locked on theirs, that we have this opportunity to model it for them so that when they get a phone someday, it is completely normal for them to be in total focus and relationship. I believe we can do that. I believe that normal can look different to our kids. I believe in a beautiful future that starts in the present, that starts today. I believe we don't have to wait to create that. I believe we have these big grand dreams and aspirations, but it starts with the simplest of acts, and that's just putting down your phone and being there.

Joey Odom (27:15):

One of my favorite movies is The Greatest Showman, and there's a line in one of the songs that I think fits perfectly for us. As we talk about this, we close this out. That line is I think of what the world could be a vision of. The one I see a million dreams. It's all it's going to take. Oh, a million dreams for the world we're going to make. So what if you could make that world for you, for your family, for your marriage, for your kids, for your kids' futures? What if this is the beginning of multi-generational change based on what you do today? I believe you can do it. That's why Aro exists. Believe with us, join us today. The Aro podcast is produced and edited by the team at Palm Tree pod co. Special thanks to Emily Miles and Caitlin Kring for media and digital support and to executive producers Anthony Palmer of Palm Tree Pod Co, and the Prince of the Low Country Tides himself. Rich Donnellan of Aro.

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