Ichi Telethon | Beyond Imagination: Mark Warren's Visionary Village

Step into the visionary world of Mark Warren, the mastermind behind the Happy Company and the enchanting children's tale, "Charlie's Thinking Cheese." As we unravel the threads of Mark's latest initiative, you'll be transported to Dunesmere Visionary Village, an innovation oasis nestled in the historic heart of Northern California. Here, a grand hotel from a bygone era is reawakening, its storied walls infused with revolutionary tech and unseen marvels. Imagine attending a conference where the very journey there is as transformative as the ideas shared within—this episode promises a glimpse into a future where storytelling, technology, and human resources intersect in the most unexpected and delightful ways.

With Mark at the helm, we share our exhilaration for the collaboration that's been stirring our spirits and reshaping our perspectives. The partnership is a testament to the magic that happens when creativity and vision collide, and as we recount the milestones and the road ahead, you'll feel the infectious energy that's propelling us forward. Tune in for an episode that's more than a conversation; it's a celebration of innovation, historic preservation, and the boundless potential of what can be achieved when we dare to dream and do.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

So this next segment I am so crazy excited about, mark Warren is the founder and CEO of the happy company. You may have heard of the happy massager, the little wooden massager that's got the ball, and the little wooden rods and the massager. He invented that and from there grew yes, bring mark on. From that he grew this into an incredibly amazing company called the happy company, and I Cannot wait to see Charlie's thinking cheese hit the shelves of Amazon. Hopefully that's where it's going, right, mark.

Speaker 2: 0:33

Yes.

Speaker 1: 0:35

So I found Charlie's thinking cheese, which is his adorable story of gratitude and abundance and Showcase saying your appreciation to other people. And when I asked mark how many he had, he said I'm trying to figure out distribution. I said, well, how many do you have? He goes, I think, about 32,000. Maybe you should sell them on Amazon, so hopefully you can find that there. But his latest project that I have had the honor to be a part of just meeting with him once a week for the last couple of Months with a team of people who are working on this vision is called dunes mere visionary village. Basically, mark bought a town in northern California and is turning it into something incredible. Mark, welcome aboard to the ET telephone. Will you please explain to us what's going on in northern California?

Speaker 2: 1:21

sure I'm. Well, it's interesting I I created the happy massager, yes, and I Went to conferences all the time about innovation, but I Always felt there weren't very innovative. There were at places that weren't very innovative and I dreamed of a conference when it was, where there was be innovation, and I wanted to create a unique experience. I also know from being parts of masterminds helping other companies elevate. 80% of problems in companies are HR related. How do you deal with these and what? I've had the absolute pleasure. I look so forward to meeting with Liz and Stephanie or our team, to develop this conference. But we were considering how do we create the most extraordinary experience for our people and the conference. What we're doing, what we'd like to do is and we're just in the planning stage now but we, the hotel done smear is.

Speaker 2: 2:37

It was the secret playground of the rich and famous hundred years ago. Not many people know about it, but the trains when they would go before car travel was so popular when the trains would go from San Francisco or LA up to Seattle, they could make it as far as Dense mere and they can go over Mount Shasta. So three very powerful locomotives would push the trains over, but they would have to wait for maybe six hours. So all these people came out of the train. The town came alive. That contributed to Part of its success. Dense mirrors also Famed of having the best water on earth, because the water comes off of Manchester in snowmelt and trickles through Ten miles of volcanic caves when it reaches dens mere and in that process becomes the richest mineral, incredibly incredible water. And so it has a lot of unique things going for it, and not to mention that it's just absolutely beautiful and well preserved. It hasn't changed a lot in a hundred years. All those things I thought were absolutely fantastic.

Speaker 2: 3:52

But there's a very famous hotel in theater right across from each other. Theater was built by Randolph Hearst to entertain. There's two hers castles. Many people know about the hers castle in Sam Simi and there's also one in dense or near densamere, between densamere McLeod, and that's where her spent most of his time. It's where he entertained people, that's. They built a theater and they would bring up Charlie Chaplin and the March brothers and made incredibly famous people. Marilyn Morose was frequently free, was frequently there, president Kennedy and in many others, and what I wanted to do was take this old hotel, preserve it in its original style, but Also disguised within it some of the most advanced technologies. I know this conference is about AI, or, in part, about AI we were playing with. How could we use AI in those extraordinary ways, at the same time preserving this old look and feel of the town and of this hotel, and what we wanted to do is.

Speaker 2: 5:13

There's 80 rooms in the hotel. We're going to have 40 smaller rooms, which will be incredible In spite of their being small. You will get an incredible AR and VR experience and much more, as well as a very healthy experience. We're putting into it some incredible technologies On the larger rooms. We wanted those rooms. We're seeking sponsors.

Speaker 2: 5:40

We're actively seeking sponsors now of food companies or beverage companies of alike and that are hopefully in the West Coast, that have unique stories in their own right for substantial companies. We wanted to tell their stories in this room, but that's part of it. The other part is that there's extraordinary companies out there that we're researching and wanting to approach. If you stay in one of those rooms, the experience that you would get is you would learn all about the company, what made it so successful, but also while you arrive, and you'd be bussed up, because one of the disadvantages of densim areas is not much parking. It was a railroad town and was in design for cars, so we'll bus you up, but the experience will start on this very unique bus journey from the Bay Area to wherever they're coming from, to our facility. We want to create a murder mystery or a denser mystery tour where something happens.

Speaker 2: 7:06

But in that process you have to solve this unique problem. But in doing so our team, liz included is just a genius at coming up with how do we take, how do we solve a problem within a company, but through different contexts, I found, at least often when I'm trying to solve a problem, sometimes you address the problem directly. It's hard to come up with a solution. But when you're doing it through a different context, maybe you're helping somebody else, you come up with better solutions. So the idea was we were creating a scenario similar to maybe what you're experiencing at work, but they wouldn't recognize it right away.

Speaker 2: 7:54

And you have to solve this challenge. But we wanted to do it two ways. We wanted you to do it as you would solve it, and then the other is in the room that you're staying. As an example, let's imagine it was a room for Ghirardelli chocolate you would and in the room was modeled after Ghirardelli, which is one of the cool companies we're looking for. Really amazing story how they get started there would be. You would have to approach the problem as Mr Ghirardelli would and you would learn all about Mr Ghirardelli in the room and in really unique ways, including.

Speaker 1: 8:31

AI.

Speaker 2: 8:32

We have some real surprises for people and in this scenario, you would take you would be incorporating some very, very unique strategies for coming up with the solutions, and I don't I'm not aware of anybody else doing this and I think the experiences of doing this would be off the charts and, yeah, I'm thinking it would be an answer so our question for you. Sure.

Speaker 1: 9:21

So the idea of the Dunsmear Visionary Village, once it is built, is that you'll have basically a three day or a four day experience, right? So people would be able to choose if they want this weekend experience and go up and immersive business retreat almost larping like live action role playing where when you get assigned in the hotel room, you are the CEO of that company that has made an impact on the world and you're taking that company CEO's personality over and trying to solve a problem that that company had. Is that right?

Speaker 2: 9:59

That's right, and let me tell you a little bit about my background. When I started the happy company with this product, I didn't know anything about business. I was completely and what we found was we did everything pretty unconventional, but we gave the ability for people to totally think out of the box. We did crazy, unique things, but when you're doing so, it's amazing what you can achieve. In fact, when the company grew so quickly, we ended up hiring the CEO of I'm sorry, the HR director of IBM and the CFO of Levi Strauss. They walked through our company for two days and they were like oh my God, it's like you're winning the Indianapolis 500 race but you're driving a 67 Noah, and where I was going with that was when you start to think out of the box, you start doing things differently, and the more that came from was most.

Speaker 2: 11:04

First half didn't have the experience or the education that would qualify them for the jobs, but when we got them so fired up on what was possible, it was absolutely extraordinary what they could achieve. And now there's a lot of uncertainty in the world with COVID and many things that happened. What we're trying to create is this unique experience to give people tools to empower them in such ways they would never could imagine. And I was dyslexic and had ADHD and had a lot of learning challenges in school. I never did well in a classroom setting, but I did really well with experiences, and what we're creating is an experience that will be off the charts, unless you're going to say something, if you think.

Speaker 1: 11:54

Well, I was going to ask about one of the things we talked about is not just what happens once the village is built and you're bringing people in to have these extraordinary experiences, the leading up to actually building it, your idea around having guilds a hospitality guild, an artist guild, a builder's guild to actually envision what Dunsner Visionary Village will be and then go execute it. It's almost a live on site build this thing for chunks of time. You want to talk about that for just a second?

Speaker 2: 12:21

Yes, and I love you, brathe Again, I hate doing things in normal way. It's just so boring to me, and I've had an amazing opportunity to work with the most extraordinary people you included, Liz who are all attracted by the fact that we're doing things in an unusual way. I have a friend who's a contractor, who's just unbelievable, edward, and he was describing this and he said you know, I've always wanted to build a builder's guild and create this unique experience, and I got so excited because when I started the happy company prior to that, I went to a community in Scotland called Fintouard and they had something like this, where it was live and work and you'd learn their unique approach to work, and I thought that's amazing and we started brainstorming about the idea of what this would look like. But we wanted not only to have a builder's guild but an artist's guild as well, because my belief, in his as well is building is an art, it's an art form and art should be infused in everything you're doing.

Speaker 2: 13:36

And so what if we had an artist's guild and a builder's guild and they worked together to create this really beautiful site that we're rebuilding it? And then what if we brought in a hospitality guild where people are, how do we create off the charts most unique experience for them? And the results will be phenomenal. And you're right, and again, we're running to bring in some of the most advanced technology and infuse it in everything we're doing, and so we're looking to work with companies to provide these unique technologies, so it will be a techno wonderland for anybody that attends and an extraordinary experience. And I think I'm out of time, but yes, do you have any more questions?

Speaker 1: 14:29

I just really wanted to get the idea of Dunsmurve Visionary Village in front of this group, the Club Ichi Group. This is an incredibly connected group of event professionals, from the creative side to the business side, and to talk about what this could be, from inception to build to actual activation, to what happens with the businesses once they've gone through. This experience, I think is something that we should keep an eye on. So I want to make the invitation to the Club Ichi Community. If you have an interest in being a part of this project, learning more about this project, please drop us a line in the chat on the event or, of course, shoot me a note in Slack or an email. I would love to get you connected with Mark. He's an incredible human being. I've really enjoyed spending time with him and I am on for the ride, mark. We've got way much more to go. This is going to be really fun working with you on this project.

Speaker 2: 15:22

Thank you so much. It's been an absolute highlight in my life, so thank you.

Speaker 1: 15:28

Aw, thank you so much, Mark. All right, folks, we're going to take a short break and we will be right back with a little more AI.