March 26, 2025

Going Down the Rabbit Hole with Greg Bellinger

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Going Down the Rabbit Hole with Greg Bellinger

Are you ready to go down the rabbit hole? In this episode, Chris Hill chats with Greg Bellinger, the Co-Founder and CEO of White Rabbit Group. Greg’s been honing his craft since high school. Teaching himself to code and build websites in college, he’s now a successful entrepreneur who’s worked with folks like FedEx, Instacart, and even The Game Awards. Greg and Chris discuss the origins and growth of his development of White Rabbit, and why they focus on hiring full-time employees and maintaining a strong company culture. If you have that DIY mentality, Greg’s story is sure to inspire you to continue working towards your goals and build your own brand!


Show Highlights

  • (0:00) Intro
  • (1:58) Greg's background prior to White Rabbit Group 
  • (5:00) What led Greg to founding White Rabbit
  • (6:55) Why White Rabbit was intent on hiring full-time employees
  • (10:28) How Greg and his partner started White Rabbit Group
  • (13:08) Greg's moment of validation for White Rabbit's development
  • (17:58) What’s behind the White Rabbit Group name?
  • (19:57) Launch your podcast with HumblePod!
  • (20:37) The magic of technology and working for The Game Awards
  • (22:19) Handling The Game Award with headless development
  • (27:35) Other work White Rabbit has done over the years
  • (28:36) What's top of mind for Greg in 2025
  • (32:57) What brand does Greg admire right now?
  • (38:42) Where you can find more from Greg and White Rabbit Group



About Greg Bellinger

Greg Bellinger is the Co-Founder and CEO of White Rabbit Group, a web and mobile development agency with a fully in-house team of nearly 100 employees across three countries. His passion for technology began in childhood, leading him to hand-code his first websites in 2008. In 2016, he co-founded White Rabbit Group, building it into a trusted development partner for world-class agencies and creatives. Under his leadership, the company has earned a reputation for delivering high-quality digital solutions while fostering a close culture of technical experts.



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Transcript

Greg Bellinger: You know, I saw that business model, and I was like, let's go all in on that, which is supporting creatives and digital agencies from the development side. Because if you look at a lot of the creative studios out there or agencies that are doing pretty good, most of them are founded by, you know, people that are creatives or are really good at marketing.


There's very few of them that are created by development arms and technical people, and so we come in, and we partner with agencies. This is what we do now coming into why you're at the group. As a company, as a whole, all we do is partner with creative studios and agencies for engineering. So still to this day, our agency partners are out there, they have their clients, they're doing the designs, and we come in and we build it.


Chris Hill: Welcome to We Built This Brand, the podcast where we talk to the creators and collaborators behind brands and provide you with practical insights that you can use in growing your own business. Today, we're talking with Greg Bellinger, founder of White Rabbit Group, a development agency, specializing in supporting creative studios and digital agencies.


Greg shares his journey from self-taught web developer to entrepreneur, starting with his early business ventures before co-founding White Rabbit. He discusses the company's unique approach to managing its international team and what they've done to be successful beyond that. We also get to talk about his company's work with The Game Awards and some of their other recent successes.


There was a lot to learn in this episode, and I'm so glad that Greg was able to spend time with me. So without further ado, here's my conversation with Greg Bellinger, CEO and founder of White Rabbit Group.


Alrighty, Greg, welcome to We Built This Brand.


Greg Bellinger: Glad to be here, Chris. Excited to be here.


Chris Hill: Yeah, it's thrilled, thrilled to have you on the show today and be chatting with you about your work at The White Rabbit Group as the founder of that company and everything that you're doing there.


I'm really excited to learn more, so


where I typically like to start with these is just get into a little bit about your background first and figure out where you came from and how you got to where you are today. So tell me a little bit about your background.


Greg Bellinger: Sure. Yeah. Where'd I come from?


So, I grew up in the Bay Area, Pleasanton, California. That's where I grew up, and I graduated from high school there. Moved to Northern California, eventually made it to Chico State, graduated from Chico State with business entrepreneurship. Basically right out of high school, I started coding. Started building websites, self-taught since, like, I graduated in 2007, and in about 2008, I started coding. Started building websites, started out with this old Microsoft builder, I even forget the name, this content management system that Microsoft used to manage, and that's what kind of started my journey into code. Once I was able to build a website, coded my first site, kind of told everybody and their mother, I can build you a website, this is what I do, and kind of put on my sales hat and just started, you know, building websites. I got into e-commerce. I don't consider myself a developer anymore, but you know, the first 10 to 20 websites that I sold, I built myself, and got into custom development pretty, pretty early on as well, going from custom designs and coding them from scratch from the front end, and I remember writing the code for a lot of those, and I just love the web. Like, why did I get into it? I don't know. I love creating things from scratch and the ability to just write code, push it to a server and the whole world can have access to it. It just it blew my mind, and I quickly fell in love with it.


And so that's, you know, started self-taught, but I graduated business entrepreneurship major Chico State, and through, you know, going to college, I was building websites for a lot of companies, small businesses out of Chico, and kind of across, you know, even in the Bay Area, there was some, some clients that I attained, and it was just kind of got me through college and paid my bills.


And yeah.


Chris Hill: Yeah, that's cool. So, I mean, to have that passion early on and then to be able to leverage that into a career after college, I think is really cool. And I also find it interesting that you did a business and entrepreneurship major. Funny enough, I actually did a marketing entrepreneurship dual major in college.


So I'm familiar with the path, and so that's really cool. Not a lot of schools offer that. So that's neat.


Greg Bellinger: Yeah. Chico state has a good, really good program. When I was there, Peter Straus was was head of the program, and I just learned a lot from the people that were in that program and that I surrounded myself with.


So.


Chris Hill: Yeah.


And having that business out of college, I mean, obviously that turned into, I guess, your first company out of college, which that was really neat that you got to be able to do that, and then move on into eventually White Rabbit. So what was that journey like? What took you from each business on until where to where you got to White Rabbit?


Greg Bellinger: Yeah, so I started building websites, and I started my own agency and that was called Golden Leaf, and I was doing SEO. I was actually pretty good at it back in the day, but, you know, we were selling SEO branding, websites, business cards. We were kind of doing everything, but it was full-service, but I was using contractors basically to, you know, to fulfill all the services that we were doing. And during that time also, I built and started a couple other companies, a buddy of mine, we co-founded a company, and I was a little all over the place I guess you could say. I just love building things, creating things, love working with people, but had a, you know, an epiphany that there. Was probably focusing on too many things at the same time, and all that, you know, building websites, being a technical person, you know, used to do front end development. You know, my co-founder Abhilash and I, we started White Rabbit Group with the tenets of going all in terms of like focus and also hiring everybody as a full-time employee, and so that journey, I guess, up until White Rabbit Group was just building a lot of websites and running an agency and building a, you know, a few companies and then just kind of went all in on White Rabbit Group with my co-founder,  Abhilash, a whole, whole nother story and how we met and how that got going. But, yeah.


Chris Hill: Okay.


I find it interesting that you said, you know, an intent on hiring full-time employees. What made that one of your visions for White Rabbit?


Greg Bellinger: I think experience. So getting ghosted from a developer somewhere, I mean, before White Rabbit Group and fulfilling, you know, all the services that we were doing, I worked with people all over the world and there comes a point of, like, reliability.


Control over over hours and output. The, you know, the, all the reasons why we brought everybody in house is, you know, a big thing is culture, so retaining that culture and the people that we work with and having them full-time employees and focused on what they do. Culture is really big for us, and I just don't think when you have a fully remote in terms of not just being full-time, but part time employees, 10 hours on White Rabbit, but then 30 hours somewhere else that could be split up. I don't even know what's going on with their time. They're just not fully focused on, you know, what they're doing, what they're building, and the culture that we want to build and the team that we want to build. Another thing is quality. So, our hiring processes, you know, the hiring process is very important.


And ours is, there's a lot of steps. We know how to hire engineers because we're both, you know, technical founders, and obviously our team, at this point of almost a hundred people, are architects and our hiring team is really good at what they do. So quality and the output of, you know, code and things that we're building through the hiring process is really important, and then cost is another. You know, when you bring people in-house and you have the, everybody within the entity, there's no middle person kind of taking a cut. So those are all the tenants as to why.


Chris Hill: That makes a lot of sense. I mean, we've definitely experimented with outsource, and yeah, we run into that kind of, like a third party.


They're going to help you connect with someone in India, and it's like, "But I'm paying you. How much less are you paying them based on what I'm paying you?" Like, you always have to wonder what they're really getting out of the deal when that happens. That makes a lot of sense. And yeah, I mean, it hiring people, especially full-time versus part time and all that, like, I totally understand that desire. It definitely does make a difference when you've got someone on your team that's dedicated to your work, focused on your business. Yeah. So yeah, a lot of parallels there. I can, I can identify with running my own company because yeah, hiring contractors is a much different animal than, than dealing with the dealing with full-time folks.


And it makes a difference in the quality of the work you do too.


Greg Bellinger: We just want to be reliable for agency partners. We are a contractor to who we work with, so it's not like there's not a use. You have contractors, right? They use and there's definitely a need for it if you don't have a specialty, you want to focus on what you do and you bring in getting outsourced.


But for us as a company, you know, we want to be reliable and having the team there is key and having everybody in house. So yeah, like there's not a single service offering that we offer where there's a contractor working on it. And we're in, yeah, we're in three countries, too. So we're in


India, Columbia, and the United States. We have entities set up in all three of those countries and operate in those countries. So,


Chris Hill: Yeah, that's a big difference, too. Being able to hire direct, hire those people there as opposed to those third parties and whatnot. So, yeah, I got you. So, yeah.


So let's talk a little bit about White Rabbit.


So you get to White Rabbit and you've got this business partner. I'm sorry, what was his name again?


Greg Bellinger: Abhilash.


Chris Hill: Abhilash?


Greg Bellinger: Yeah.


Chris Hill: And is he, based here in the States then?


Greg Bellinger: He does live in California now, but he's from India. When we started the company, he was in India, and him and I met actually on oDesk.


It's just crazy how it, just one small connection can kind of change life and the trajectory, like literally met on a platform that basically, oDesk, it's like Upwork, it connects, you know, contractors and people to do work together. And anyways, again, I've worked with people all over the world and Abhilash and I met on the oDesk, connected, we worked on our first project, and there was just something that was different. You know, a couple of years go by, we ended up working on a project big enough to where I fly out to India. So I was out there for about five weeks, I think the first trip. So we were building a product together, and there's nothing like in-person.


Our relationship changed obviously after that meeting him in-person and connecting in-person, and then just a couple of years after that, I was like, "Hey, let's, you know, I want to take a pivot on the agency, go all in on engineering, supporting agencies, creative studios." We both put in money. We both co-founded the company, and it kind of hit the ground running.


So he's a technical person as well. More back end, more front end. So it was kind of a perfect match, full stack match, you could say. And yeah, he, you know, he was working on big web applications flying back and forth from Europe. So, you know, more big enterprise experience, and I had more small-to-medium sized company experience and, but yeah, both started the company with, you know, the tenants of our service offerings and everybody in-house and just going all in, and we hired our first, we incorporated in 2016, hired our first developer in January of 2017, full-time, again. And now we're, you know, we're almost a hundred people, you know, and we've opened up Columbia since then. We've never taken on funding as a company, you know, self-funded, pretty much profitable since the first month that we started as a service company. And yeah, we've just been, been having fun.


Chris Hill: So, you mentioned being making money pretty much from the first month and that's a great feat to be able to just start with profit, especially if you've had to put money into the business and the funding and building and hiring people. What would you, would you consider that kind of your moment of validation?


Just having that having that happen in your first month or was there something else where you're like, "Oh yeah, White Rabbit's are really a thing now. We know this is going to be better than just a two month company."


Greg Bellinger: Yeah. The moment of validation was probably a few years before starting the company.


So I was, you know, I was building websites for people. Golden Leaf was a company that I owned and that I was building websites for, and I partnered up with a person named Helen Duval. She was a designer out of Chico, and I partnered up with her. She did the designs, and I did the code. I even remember, like this is, I was still writing code at this point, you know, so we built this relationship.


She's a creative, and she owns her own studio, has her own clients, she designs the websites, does the branding, and then from the technical side, I would take those designs and code it out. And so this is where the idea and the validation kind of started with White Rabbit Group. And there's, you know, it's, as a technical person, like, I could stay in that lane. She does what she does best. I do what I do best, but there's also this natural reoccurring nature to the relationship because after one successful project, she continues to bring in more projects, right? And I remember actually like a month, there was like a month where I was kind of struggling and bringing in my own clients.


And I was, you know, I was paying my own bills, my rent, everything was coming through the company that I was, you know, building Golden Leaf, and one month it was, I was kind of struggling and she continued to bring in, I think she brought in like two projects that month, and it helped me like, you know, float and sustain and pay my rent for that month.


So there was this reoccurring nature. It was also just a strong relationship. I didn't have to teach her what a domain was. I didn't have to teach her kind of like basic stuff. It was just a very smooth, you know, relationship, and so that's where I kind of saw the business model was in that moment, and I liked creating. Didn't, SEO is great, but it was, I wasn't like completely passionate about it, right? Or, you know, marketing, even though I do love marketing. And so, you know, I saw that business model. I was like, let's go all in on that. Which is supporting creatives and digital agencies from the development side, because if you look at a lot of the creative studios out there or agencies that are doing pretty good, most of them are founded by, you know, people that are creatives are really good at marketing.


There's very few of them that are created by development arms and technical people, and so we come in and we partner with agencies. This is what we do now coming into White Rabbit Group. As a company, as a whole, all we do is partner with creative studios and agencies for engineering. So still to this day, our agency partners are out there, they have their clients, they're doing the designs, and we come in and we build it. That was my "Aha!" moment. It was, yeah, a few years before, and we, you know, validated it and we got, you know, then it became an  "Aha!" moment when we reached out to other agencies, did cold outreach and said, "Hey, this is what we do. We've done it before. We're happy to build it out for you," and then it just kind of snowballed. So I think today we've got like 138 plus signed agency partners.


Chris Hill: And I mean, that's definitely a need having come from the marketing world, having come from the more creative side of things. Like partnering with a good development arm that knows what they're doing, that knows how to help execute well on these types of projects, you know, means a lot from somebody on this side.


So I think what y'all are doing, you know, has a lot of value for those types of folks.


Greg Bellinger: Yeah, it's a black box. If you don't know how to develop a right code, it's a little bit dark, so you have to have somebody trusted that knows what they're doing and everything's digital.


Chris Hill: Yeah, I've definitely seen the other side where he goes awry and you don't want that. You need a trusted partner. Oh, man. Stories I could tell you over a beer that are not good for the podcast, but that's really cool.


So then this idea for the White Rabbit Group happens, where did the name come from?


Why the White Rabbit Group?


Greg Bellinger: Man, I love the name White Rabbit. It comes from Alice in Wonderland. Originally stems from that, and then obviously The Matrix, you know, pulled it from Alice in Wonderland, Down the Rabbit Hole. And The Matrix really started, you know, the movement, Follow the White Rabbit."


The digital world, writing code so it kind of stems from that whole realm. There's also the magical, kind of, like, magician's rabbit hat, because again, to anybody who doesn't know code, it is kind of like magic. It's like writing another language. It literally is. So there's that side to it.


We're fast like rabbits, and we also do a lot of white label development, so White Rabbit also is very fitting for that, but the logo itself, my friend actually had an agency, which was the logo White Rabbit Group, and they shut it down, and I was in the middle of transitioning Golden Leaf to White Rabbit. And the brand wasn't right, and I was going through, like, all these iterations on the brand, and it was basically a logo sitting on my friend's computer, and I was like, "Hey, let me take the logo, run with it. It's perfect for where we're going." And so I actually bought it off a friend for a hundred dollars, and we hit the ground running. I don't think I've actually said that publicly. But that's not a problem at all, but yeah, we you know, bought it, hit the ground running, and it's a great brand.


And was designed by somebody local in Chico as well, and he just did a phenomenal job with the logo. So.


Chris Hill: Yeah, you got a much better deal on your brand than I did.


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Chris Hill: Yeah, that's a really neat analogy and ,you're right. Like it is like magic when you do development, right? You know, technology. I was talking to my six-year-old son the other day, and he was like, "There's no magic in the world." I'm like, "Yes, there is. It's called 'technology.'" You know, when you can't understand, when you don't know how it works, and it just works, that's magic, but it's really neat.


And y'all have done, speaking of magic, y'all have done some really cool things. Some really cool projects since the time that you all have started, and I noticed one of those that's probably near and dear to my heart is The Game Awards. That's just as a video gamer in general and someone who loves that content.


So if you don't mind, I'd love to learn more about, like, that project. What was the problem? How did you solve it for The Game Awards? Like, what all did you do with them?


Greg Bellinger: We can talk about The Game Awards, which is awesome. I'd love to. You know, one thing about our company is like 90 percent of the projects maybe 80 percent, close to 90 percent we can't even talk about.


So there's some cool things that, like, we've built that we can't even really talk about because we do a lot of white label development. We're under, you know, NDAs and what we build, and we don't really push too hard and trying to case study everything that we build. But really the white label development, you know, we've built some really cool things and the end client doesn't really know that we're the ones that actually built it out, which is interesting, but that's kind of the world that we sit in, right? The white label space. And when it comes to The Game Awards, you know again, we partner with agencies and creative studios, and a lot of our referrals and a lot of the work that we do comes from our agency partners.


The Game Awards came to us from one of our agency partners, and you know, they had previously, it was built from another engineering team. But we took it on, and it's headless. It's a really cool build, and I, don't know how deep I can actually get in on it, but every year, man, we're our technical project manager, Michelle, she's on the project, and she's, you know, for the couple of weeks coming up to The Game Awards, the whole team is like, you know, ready to go.


It's a pretty big event. Obviously live, and we've handled and do handle live events. But again, publicly, what we can talk about The Game Awards is probably the biggest that we could talk about, and it's very interesting seeing our whole team just come together every year and deliver and we're all watching it and yeah, it's a lot of fun. So, and it's a cool build and how it's built and it being headless, I don't know if you know too much about headless.


Chris Hill: I don't, and I'm sure our listeners would love to know, so please tell me, what does "headless" mean here?


Greg Bellinger: So headless basically is where you take, so when you look at like WordPress as a content management system as a whole, it's not headless, it's attached front end and in the back end. Taking it headless is basically using APIs and pulling apart the CMS and having the front end running and then the CMS running basically through APIs. And what it does is it gives you, there's kind of two reasons why you would go ahead this. The first is brand control. So you control everything because it's, you control all of the front end essentially, and you can put it on different frameworks. So brand customization is one big thing, and then speed is another. And when it comes to speed, you know, maybe a five to 10 million company, it might not make a difference, but when you get into a, you know, a hundred million dollar or billion dollar company, that's doing e-commerce sales, you know, a quarter of a second makes a difference.


So, so there's speed there. We do e-commerce headless integrations as well. And it's kind of more for mid to large size companies to where it makes sense to go headless and actually do headless integration.


Chris Hill: So if I understand correctly, like with WordPress, you've got kind of this overarching access to it. Like as an editor or somebody, I can just go in and, you know, write a blog post or whatnot, but on your side with headless, it sounds like it's a little more separated.


Greg Bellinger: It is, but you're still managing it through the content management system.


Yeah, so you're still writing it, but the front end is pulled away, the HTML CSS. If I had a whiteboard and write on it'd probably be easier to show you, but basically the front end is pulled away and is headless, is what you could say. So that's where that kind of term comes from.


And it gives you manageability, like customization on the front end and speed and control over the front end. Basically is what it gives you. So Shopify, we've had this on top of Shopify, WordPress, one of the bigger content management systems, like when it, in terms of headless is Contentful, we do a lot of headless integrations with Contentful.


So.


Chris Hill: Cool. You've developed this for The Game Awards. You've developed this thing. I mean, you sound like it sounds like you also did live streaming there. So you were doing streaming on the website as well, correct? Would that be?


Greg Bellinger: There is some live streaming, and I'm forgetting the platform that they're using.


It's not like we built that, but obviously keeping the site alive. There is the voting platform which is custom that we've built and managed. So there is that component. Game Awards is just getting bigger and bigger as well. We love working with them.


Chris Hill: Yeah, I'm sure it's a bit of an adrenaline rush because maintaining that it's not, you're leading up to this event, and then you actually have to make sure the site stays live while the stream stays live during the event, and that just.


Greg Bellinger: For sure.


Chris Hill: Nerve wracking.


Greg Bellinger: Our Technical PM, her name is Michelle, again. She got invited to The Game Awards this year. But it's like, I can't go to The Game Awards cause I have to make sure that the site is live and doesn't fail. Like, I can't be in the room watching the show. I have to be, make sure that the site is working in function.


Chris Hill: Cause you have that added layer of, like, the people watching The Game Awards are probably going to have some technical knowledge of what you're doing, and if that stream is down or that doesn't happen, like it's just that much, I, yeah, I can, I can definitely. Yeah.


Greg Bellinger: Yeah. A lot of gamers are also developers, so they're trying to break the site and try to like make things happen. Like for sure.


Chris Hill: That I hadn't even thought about that part, but yeah, golly, man. That sounds like a quite the challenge, but you've, but it looks like y'all have done a good job and gotten it out there.


And you know, everybody enjoys watching The Game Awards. I know.


So, well, there's a lot of other things we could talk about. I mean, you all have worked with FedEx and Instacart and a bunch of other big names I'm sure you can't talk about. Is there anything else that stands out to you as like, "Hey, this is one really cool thing The White Rabbit has done that I just want to make sure people know about."


Greg Bellinger: I love the company that we built is just amazing because we have such an awesome team. Again, everybody in the house, we have a strong culture, and we were out there to support our agency partners. We just care. We care a lot and building a service company can be challenging and scaling it.


And we, we've done that, I think in part due to the service offering that we have, it's not too broad and who we work for and then just caring and putting everything in place. For scaling our team has really worked out, so.


Chris Hill: That's great. Yeah, it definitely sounds like you've positioned yourself in a good niche for what you do, and you've got the people to support that, so that's awesome.


So what, just thinking a little more broad now what is top of mind for you in the industry as we, we go into 2025? I have a feeling I know what you're gonna say, but I'm really curious to know, what's top of mind?


Greg Bellinger: Well, what am I gonna say?


Chris Hill: Something about AI.


Greg Bellinger: Yeah. AI's taken over. I just I have a weekly newsletter that I write every week, and I release it.


And last week I wrote about, I'm using it every day. I'm personally using it every day. It's kind of like my lawyer on the side, writing clauses, editing clauses, copywriting, ton of research. I've done a ton of research on ChatGPT. It's kind of my go to, and it's quickly become a tool that I use every single day, you know, as a CEO of nearly a hundred people. And so when you talk about, yeah, what's ahead, I guess, what's new, and what's taken over, it's these chatbots.


You know, I kind of held back there because it's not technically AI yet. It's machine learning, and patterns, but AI's what everybody's calling it, and it's, and it will be, you know, AI one day. But it's taken over a site here for us as an engineering team. There's not a, I'll just make this statement, there's not a single engineer in the entire world that should not be using AI at this point as its assistant for writing code, and our team for sure, is using it, and it's taken over. So, you know, we're starting to do integrations on it and getting, you know, some projects in terms of like machine learning.


And it's cool to see it's taken over everything. Fathom. I don't know if you use Fathom or have heard of that, but it's a new app that our project managers are using. It records the meeting, puts recaps for the whole meeting, and it's, you know, it's AI driven. It learns your behavior, and it's, there's just really cool tools out there being built. And so, take it over.


Chris Hill: Yeah. I've definitely had my experiences with AI. Just, I've been impressed. I've actually been more impressed with Gemini lately. That's the one that I've been looking at and going, "Oh. Wow. This is better than I thought it was," because it can integrate with, if you have Google Suite for your office, you can say like, "Look at my email and make sure I haven't missed anything."


You know, and just little things that otherwise you'd have to hire an assistant for, and I'm a big verbal processor, so like having the ability to just talk to something, basically a brick wall, and have it speak back is really nice.


Greg Bellinger: Nice. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I haven't used Gemini too much, but.


Chris Hill: Yeah, it's fascinating, and we use a lot of ChatGPT here, too.


But but yeah, we try to, still, I mean, the balance, and I like the way you said using it as an assistant to help, because we definitely try to. I think it's very important that you don't have, you know, just assume that AI's already at a place where it could just do everything for you, and you don't need those employees anymore, or you don't need, you know, that much team, or it's going to save you that much time, because it's helpful, but it's still not the be all, end all yet. Calling it a chatbot was a good way to delineate.


Greg Bellinger: It's going to enhance all of our jobs, and could it make three developers, you know, turn three developers into one, maybe. But yeah, it's, people aren't going anywhere, and it's an enhancement for sure. So it's a new layer that's going touch everything.


Chris Hill: It feels a lot like when I was growing up, like seeing laptops come into reality.


My dad worked for AT&T, so like, I saw him bring home a laptop for the first time. You know, I saw all this technology. We got dial up and all that, and all these times people said, "Oh, this is going to change the world," and then there was some fear about people losing jobs. It never happened because it just always made us that much more efficient. People figured out how to work with it, and it just created more work and we're just doing that much more with the same people. So yeah, it's a, there's a fascinating future there, but yeah, I can see that being really applicable to what y'all are handling and doing. So


well, yeah, as, as we wrap up always like to ask this question at the end. I mean, this is marketing branding related, you know, but always want to know from you, like what brand do you admire the most right now?


Greg Bellinger: My go to is, and I don't know, maybe a lot of people say this, man, but I just love the brand. It's Stripe. I don't know if you get that one a lot. I know it's the question you ask a lot of people, but I love Stripe's branding. It's clean. Whenever I talk about branding and messaging and UI design and their site and even UX simplicity, Stripe is one of my go to's. Another is Nike. Love the book Shoe Dog. So as a company, we did hand out Shoe Dog to all of our employees. I think we stopped in that a little bit, but we're still handing some of them out. But Nike and the company, they built Shoe Dog. Have you read the book?


Chris Hill: I have not read the book.


No.


Greg Bellinger: It's a, yeah, it's a good one. Shoe Dog, it's about the founding story of Nike, essentially, and my favorite thing that I love about it is just, it didn't happen overnight. You know, it took them many, many years to become the Nike that they became, and the lesson is, you know, success stories, while they do happen very rarely overnight, most of them are built over a long period of time and through tenacity and just not stopping, continuing to go, continuing to push for the mission that you're on and that they were on. And so Nike is another brand that I love, and the swoosh, and everything that Nike represents. It's a really cool story, so


Chris Hill: Yeah, I've had some personal interaction with one of their former creative directors, Stanley. He's a really cool guy.


Greg Bellinger: Yeah. Stanley, I think does he own Tether at this point. Is that Stanley?


Chris Hill: Maybe it's been a while since, since I've connected with him. But yeah, he's a fascinating individual. He's got very distinct hair. You would know him by his hair. He has like.


Greg Bellinger: Yeah, he's out of Seattle, right?


Chris Hill: Yeah, I think so. And he's got like this, at least last time I saw him, he was like styling it out.


Yeah.


Greg Bellinger: Yeah. Love Tether. I'm almost certain that's Tether. We actually haven't met, people on our team have, but love Tether. He's done some really cool stuff. Starbucks, and he owns his own agency now, and he's OG.


Chris Hill: Yeah, really, really is. Yeah. I met him at a TED event back in like, golly, 2010? Something like that a long time ago, but it was a cool guy.


I just thought of that cause I know he was there I think early on in Nike when they were doing some of that early branding, and the "Just Do It." campaign and stuff, so that's really neat. Too, I will say Stripe for me, like I didn't think about them as a brand to admire just because like, it's so ubiquitous, but you're right.


Like I, as you were saying that I was thinking back of like when I first started HumblePod, we started with Stripe for payment system, and I was amazed at how easy it was to implement. Like, I was so worried it would be a very difficult process to get payment systems implemented and all that, and they make it so easy.


Just good UX and all that. Just a really good experience using their product.


Greg Bellinger: And if you go to their site, their UI system is so clean. It's, they've done a good job.


Chris Hill: Even, even someone like me can use it. So that that's saying something.


Well, Greg, thank you for your time today. Where can people connect with you and learn more about the White Rabbit Group?


Greg Bellinger: You can check us out at whiterabbit.group. You can follow us on LinkedIn. You can follow me on LinkedIn, and that's where you can find us. So we've got some cool stuff in the books for the future as well. Kind of got my head sound on future stuff. So yeah, give us a follow suit. We're up to, and.


White Rabbit.


Chris Hill: Excellent. Alrighty. Well, Greg, thank you for your time.


Greg Bellinger: Yeah. Thank you, Chris. It's a pleasure.


Chris Hill: Thanks for checking out this episode of We Built This Brand. Don't forget to like, follow, and subscribe on your player of choice. You can also keep up on the podcast on our website at webuiltthisbrand.com. If you've liked this episode, please give it a five star review and make sure to tell all your friends about it so we can continue to build this brand.