Happy Campers: CEO Jeffrey Hunter on Storyteller Overland’s Success

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Stacie Jacobsen: Thanks for joining us today on The Pulse by Bernstein, where we bring you insights on the economy, global markets, and all the complexities of wealth management. I'm your host, Stacie Jacobsen. It's never easy to turn an idea into a thriving business, let alone a hugely successful enterprise. But hearing stories from entrepreneurs who have navigated that journey can be genuinely inspirational.

Today, we have one of those stories for you. Joining me is Brian Haloossim, Senior Managing Director at Bernstein. Welcome, Brian.

Brian Haloossim: Thank you, Stacie.

Stacie Jacobsen: Okay, Brian, for this episode, you spoke with a CEO whose company has attracted a loyal and growing community around its products.

Brian Haloossim: That's right, Stacie. Jeffrey Hunter is the founder, CEO, and Chief Brand Officer of Storyteller Overland.

While they make custom camping vans that have really set a standard for quality, it's already attained iconic status as an adventure lifestyle brand. We wanted to hear Jeffrey's insights on building a company that has succeeded by creating a culture of exploration, innovation, and connection with a community of like minded people.

Stacie Jacobsen: All right, Brian. This sounds like a fun one. I think our listeners will really enjoy the conversation.

Brian Haloossim: Hey, Jeffrey. I wanted to welcome you. I'm really excited to have what I'm hoping is going to be a pretty in depth dialogue. Thanks for joining us.

Jeffrey Hunter: Hey, Brian. Grateful to be here. Appreciate you having me.

Brian Haloossim: Well, why don't we dive in and I'll tell you something caught me. The other day when I was just doing a little bit of a brush up research, and I looked at your LinkedIn and in the bio, it said daydreamer with a plan, brand builder with a purpose, storyteller with a passion, lifelong student of interesting people with big ideas.

And I absolutely loved it, but there's a lot there to unpack. And if you don't mind, I wanted you to maybe tell me a little bit about what that means to you and how that sort of led to, you know, the number of businesses that you've created to today.

Jeffrey Hunter: Sure. I think all of those things are kind of anchored back to this insatiable curiosity and just this fascination with the world around me and all the great things that there are to learn.

And the great ways there are to be connected to people. And when I happen to lock in on folks that fascinate me or ideas that challenge me, I kind of camp out there for a while and see what I can discover and see what value I might be able to add to the world as a result of it. I think it was my granddad who told me that it's okay to wing it because everybody's just winging it.

But the people who are successful and wind up someplace that they enjoy you. Are the folks who wing it on purpose with a goal in mind.

Brian Haloossim: Yeah, well, let's talk a little bit more about that when you think about what has led to the business that you're in today. A lot of people may not realize you've done this before with other companies.

Can you talk just broadly a little bit about your background? And then what has led to where you are today with the company that you currently are running, which we're going to get deeper into.

Jeffrey Hunter: It's all been a process of discovery. I think I originally started out in life thinking that I was going to be this great songwriter and rock star and, uh, write the songs that made the whole world sing, but, uh, somewhere along the way, I realized I was better at maybe helping other people pursue their passions and, uh, and achieve their goals.

But along the way, Just, uh, met some really fascinating people through that stint through music. And I think I learned a lot of the skills that have served me well in business. Just through that collaborative process of hanging out with other creative artists who were really skilled at their craft, but were able to adapt and just tune into what one another was doing, find the groove and work together and.

I think that is one thing that I learned from that, uh, that musical phase of life that connected me to a lot of other folks and that would ultimately become business partners of mine and things that had nothing directly to do with music, but still had everything to do with collaboration and creativity and finding that groove and tuning into the right frequency and playing well with others in the same way that we would build bands back in the day and write songs.

It wound up we were building teams and Designing and developing products that over time got me into the second stage automotive world, which is where I kind of ultimately wind up going down the path. That became Storyteller. But in that business, we were really more, um, anchored towards the luxury and really upscaled, up armored, dignitary transportation side of the world.

We were manufacturing outrageously cool, uh, very bespoke, finely crafted vehicles, but we were doing it in this very custom, one off way to suit the very specific needs of, uh, some pretty fascinating and wealthy, uh, Individuals around the world and learning that level of depth of engineering and being able to achieve that level of excellence and quality and sophistication.

But again, throughout that, it got me connected to all the folks. And connected to all the OEM partners and everything that would ultimately lead to storytelling.

Brian Haloossim: Want to talk a little bit about Storyteller Overland now, and maybe for the audience's benefit, can you take just a couple of minutes to tell everyone in your words, what the company does?

Jeffrey Hunter: Well, Storyteller in its highest aspiration just helps connect people to a more adventurous way of life and helps people to say yes to a bigger, brighter world that's out there. And we happen to do that by creating the world's highest quality adventure vehicles. So the way we imagined it from day one is that every outbound adventure is kind of also an inward expedition.

So you've got folks that are not only trying to find the right vehicle to get them where, Uh, they want to go, but they're really finding a sense of internal self confidence, uh, that, that coincides with how capable their vehicle is, but that helps them to kind of unlock a deeper level of what's capable within themselves.

So it's an adventure lifestyle brand at its core, but it originally expressed itself to the world as a very capable, very adaptive vehicle.

Brian Haloossim: So you've definitely done a couple of things that stood out to me, you know, one, you've become very quickly, arguably the number one class B RV expedition vehicle company in the U.S.

In a pretty short period of time. And then, in addition, the RV industry has a lot of barriers to entry and competition. So what's differentiated Your company and allowed you to reach this level of success in such a short period of time, even though it may not have felt a short period.

Jeffrey Hunter: No, in a lot of ways, it felt like it all happened at light speed.

And we're super grateful that people tuned into what we were trying to project to the world. If there was a key differentiator, it just started with the people that we were able to surround ourselves with. And just this shared value stream of just wanting to help people unlock something in themselves and to embrace a way of life that they might have been dreaming of from the cubicle, but finding a lot of excuses why they couldn't pursue it.

Brian Haloossim: Yeah, one of the things that stood out to me was that the companies often compared to iconic outdoor lifestyle brands like Land's End and Patagonia. And I'd love to know how you sort of transformed the company from this idea that you just sell RVs to, you know, a broader lifestyle brand and what were the key strategies behind getting to that shift?

Jeffrey Hunter: Well, I think the superpower we had early on and seeing, you know, where we would play and how we would kind of win in the space and how we would help people win in the life they were pursuing was just a profound amount of, of curiosity.

And to listen, what people were really saying, uh, that they wanted to achieve what they needed from a vehicle, where they wanted to go, the kinds of experiences that they were wanting to have.

And so, yes, the product had to be great. Yes. It had to be innovative. Yes. It had to be able to help people to travel farther and stay longer. But what people were. Ultimately, buying into was this kind of shared sense of community and a touch point with other people who are on a similar journey and trying to unlock similar experiences for themselves.

Brian Haloossim: Have you been able to bring that community together? I'm sure technology is involved, but what are the ways that this community knows about each other? How are they able to share these stories?

Jeffrey Hunter: Great question. And sure, it's super helpful that we happen to live during an age where you have constant tech and social media and all these different channels to, to get a message out there, but, uh, nothing replaces direct human interaction.

So what we learned early on is you can pretend to care, but you can't pretend to be there. And we just were observing that there were all these places.

That people were already showing up and experiences that they were already seeking out in early like van life gatherings and overland expos that were already had an audience, but it was kind of a disparate and we just felt like if we came in and just presented ourselves to the world as, as radically inclusive and just extend the invitation in a way that, that just let people know that they were welcome around the campfire.

And we help to facilitate those good experiences and just go out there and, and, and in truth, just be kind and friendly and get to know folks and listen to what they were looking for and to see if we were a good fit for them.

Brian Haloossim: Yeah. You mentioned kindness and one of the things that stood out and I've read it in different places and you actually mentioned it, even the first time we met is you've been described as a leader.

Who weaponizes kindness and you have talked about that as being a critical part of the company today. Can you just talk a little bit more about what that means and maybe even some examples of how that's played into the mission and the culture of the company?

Jeffrey Hunter: It starts from a foundation. I mean, life can be tough and the world is a hard place.

So just knowing that people are just dealing with so much, we just thought that how can we remove stress? How can we just simplify things?

How can we just design from the ground up? Products that are going to be simple and high quality and they're built to last and how are we going to design a business system that is super responsive and very human and it doesn't hide behind layers of technology, but embraces technology.

As a means to get closer to the customer and to be more present for them. It's just a human journey that we're all on together. So why not treat people with respect and decency and dignity, not as a manipulative tool to get them to buy what you're selling, but just as a true way to connect with other folks who probably are a big part of the solution for the things that you need.

And vice versa, we've discovered just as human beings that life's a lot more fun in good times and in bad when you just show up with kindness and try to be helpful.

Brian Haloossim: So Jeffrey, this community that keeps coming up, I'm sure it gives you feedback on the product and their experiences. Can you give us a sense of some of the constructive feedback that you've received that you felt like, Hey, that's really good input.

I need to act on this, or we need to really think about making some adjustments.

Jeffrey Hunter: For sure. I can give you a specific example that just resonates in my mind from kind of the earliest days of the business. Maybe we were just getting our footing and distributing vehicles out into the world and into the wild and our online community.

That, uh, one of the primary channels is through this opt in Facebook group that tracks along with, uh, the Storyteller Overland Insiders and MODElifers. So it's just folks that were curious about our product, curious about our brand, and getting some real world feedback from other owners. Early on, we were just obsessing over quality and obsessing over all the details so much so that we would begin and end almost every meetings by saying that the only details that, that matter are every single one of them.

There's this energy that was reverberating off the walls. And it was like when we would tune in on that community on Facebook, it was almost like this, like positive dopamine hit that we're hearing this feedback where people were experiencing the value.

Of the details that we were obsessing over, and all of that was true until one day it wasn't this one woman who had showed up and he was asking questions and vetting, like, is storyteller right for me?

And what's your experience about this? Well, she finally bought a vehicle. And I think within Uh, a matter of days after getting it, like she was just, she showed up on Facebook and just kind of went nuclear with us over the weekend. So like my experience does not live up to this. And I, I spent my heart on running on Storyteller because I thought it was going to be this really great, you know, really well crafted thing.

And like as soon as I drove it off the lot, I think it was like an issue of like, you Some squeaking thing in the galley was making her understandably upset. So I totally empathize with it and I got it. It was just like somebody being highly vocal over something that wasn't awesome. But to make a long story short, I showed up, that was over the weekend as I remember it.

I showed up here on a Monday morning at our manufacturing facility. It's like a six o'clock in the morning. Our team was just getting up and running. Production was starting to hum. And I looked across the way and I saw kind of a huddle up of some of our craftsmen team, one of our build stations.

They asked me to come over and it turns out that they were talking about the experience that this woman had gone vocal about on the Facebook group.

And I come to find out that they had been talking about it all weekend because they took themselves and their work and what the Storyteller vision and values and vibes were all about. They took that very seriously, but they also took the quality and the craftsmanship of the work that they were contributing, you know, to the process very seriously.

When I went over and talked with them, they already had a plan. They were like, Hey, Jeffrey, we think we know what that what's causing this issue for this woman. And they thought that it needed to be, uh, you know, presented back to the design team. The actual craftsmen on the team who were not going to abide having somebody having a negative experience by something that they had crafted.

So literally by the end of that day, we were on to looking for a better way to approach that from a design and a manufacturing process standpoint and all of that. Because it's not just the particular, it was customer service team or the the after sales care team that was queued into that. It's everybody in the company that's making sure that, that the folks who invest their hard earned money into what we were building was giving them full value.

Brian Haloossim: Yeah. It seems like a incredible example of a culture of accountability that most companies strive for. So when you think about the next maybe three to five years for the company, what does that look like? What's the sort of strategic plan and direction?

Jeffrey Hunter: I think people, hopefully at the community level, the customer level, Throughout the industry as well, I think they've begun to recognize that storyteller is going to be here for a minute.

We've spent the last five and a half years really building the foundation for what this business and this brand and this community will be not only in the run of the next three to five years, but for the next three to five decades. We view it that we're building a legacy brand and doing deep work that will reverberate for generations.

We intentionally staffed this business. And recruited folks whose core is that they're creative to the core. And they're those fellow daydreamers with a plan. And they're everything that you talked about from my LinkedIn bio. We've had a strong center of gravity to continue to. Attract some of the thought leaders and brand builders and marketers and product designers and industrial designers.

We've been able to recruit those folks away from, you know, some of the largest and most powerful consumer brands on the planet, and here they are helping little old storyteller to continue to imagine what the next phase forward is going to look like. So as a specific answer, yes, we're going to continue to be curious and listen.

To what's missing from the market and what our core vehicles, where those can take people next and how we can continue to integrate new technologies to create new experiences. So we continue to make investments, not just on the vehicle side or the class B and the class C side, but we've continued to integrate lightweight towable businesses.

We acquired a business called taxa. Which is a super innovative, lightweight, towable business with its origin story, uh, with a space architecture and NASA engineers. So it just fits in super well and plugged in a gap for what was missing in our ecosystem. So you'll see us playing in more spaces, not just for the sake of it, but because we think that we're able to creatively find better solutions to problems that have gone unanswered for too long.

Brian Haloossim: Well, we look forward to watching the company continue to grow. We wish you and Storyteller, obviously, much success in the future and really appreciate that you've joined us today.

Jeffrey Hunter: Ah, I love the experience. I appreciate you inviting us on. Would love to have a follow on conversation with you at some point in the future so we can kind of review the progress along the way, but love what you are doing and appreciate you including us in the conversation.

Yeah, thank you, Jeffrey.

Stacie Jacobsen: All right, Brian, thank you for leading this insightful conversation. I know our listeners will really be inspired by Jeffrey's story.

Brian Haloossim: I really think they will too, Stacie. This is really about building an amazing culture.

Stacie Jacobsen: Thanks to everyone for listening. We'll be back with a new episode in three weeks from now.

I'm your host, Stacie Jacobsen, wishing you a great rest of the week.