Punk’s not dead—it’s in the boardroom

A few years ago Adrian Swinscoe, a customer experience consultant, was lamenting that the field had become overly focused on benchmarks, metrics, and other abstract notions removed from actually connecting with customers.

“People were getting so much into the details, they were losing sight of the customer,” he says.

If only, Swinscoe mused to a friend over a beer, someone could just do something a bit more “punk.” As Swinscoe, who counts Bad Religion among his favorite bands, thought about what exactly that could mean, he realized the analogy felt fairly apt. After all, he says, punk evolved roughly 50 years ago partly as a reaction to rock ’n’ roll genres that had become overly focused on production and instrumentation, rather than making entertaining music. Punk musicians have long made up for a lack of rigorous training with energy, enthusiasm, and an authentic, do-it-yourself spirit. “Here’s three chords,” goes one variation of a punk-rock cliché. “Now start a band.”

Swinscoe believed the same stripped-down approach could work for customer experience, and he began putting together what became his 2019 book Punk CX, a cheeky guide with an aesthetic inspired by classic punk art. “Cull your metrics,” reads one section heading, opposite a high-contrast image of a guillotine. Scatological allusions memorably appear throughout: “Does your bathroom smell?” asks one header, using a foul restaurant toilet as an example of something that can sour a customer’s perception of a business. Another section refers to “The Law of Three Shits,” illustrated against a backdrop of poop emojis. Most sections are only a page or two long, in keeping with punk’s loud, fast tunes.

“Rather than writing chapters, I wrote tracks and tried to make it more like a fanzine than anything else, and tried to make it more impactful,” Swinscoe says. Readers found the book inspiring and refreshing, he says, though he declined to share sales numbers. He’s since released a second volume, titled Punk XL, short for “experience leadership,” and hosts a Punk CX podcast, where he’s interviewed leaders from big companies like CVS Health and Adobe, as well as a variety of startups.

Swinscoe isn’t alone in bringing inspiration and aesthetics from punk to the world of business. There are punk venture capitalists, punk real estate firms, and even punk rock human resources experts. A New York group called Punks & Pinstripes touts itself as a “secret society” for outwardly successful people looking to redefine success on their own terms, while online commentators excitedly tout vibe coding and generative AI as the next punk rock. That can be surprising, to say the least, to those who celebrate punk culture for its opposition to big corporations, embrace of DIY aesthetics and community solidarity, and focus on authenticity.

“Anybody who grew up with punk in the ‘70s, or was part of that scene, would find this completely absurd and a total contradiction,” says Jim Ruland, author of Corporate Rock Sucks: The Rise & Fall of SST Records and several countercultural novels.

Selling out, but on your own terms

Some of those involved in blending business and punk don’t completely disagree. But, having largely grown up with some iteration of punk between the ‘70s and ‘90s, they’ve also had their youthful idealism tempered by the realities of contemporary capitalism.

“I have to say, you cannot be punk and participate in capitalism,” says the author and HR consultant Laurie Ruettimann, who hosts the Punk Rock HR podcast. “Like I fundamentally believe this, so I understand the hypocrisy behind what I’m about to tell you.”

A Gen Xer who grew up listening to punk, new wave, and industrial bands like The Clash, Screeching Weasel, and KMFDM, Ruettimann says she entered the HR field after realizing she needed a way to make money after college. Over the years, she’s worked at companies including Monsanto, Unilever, and Pfizer and, more recently, as an executive coach, for which she advertises starting rates of $450 per hour.

“I could name all these bands that I loved, but I loved health insurance, I loved being able to pay back my student loans, and so there was the tension of the day,” she says. “I had to go to work, I had to sell out, and I’ve never felt good about it.”

At an internship in the 1990s, an older colleague mocked her as “Punk Rock HR,” based partly on her personal aesthetic—“there’s a fine line between punk rock and poor,” she quips—and the name stuck. A friend, now an HR director at a major hotel company, advised her to register the internet domain, which became home first to a popular blog, then to the podcast. Ruettimann’s aesthetic is now more business-forward, but she still tries to follow her values: She won’t take public speaking assignments in Florida and Texas, for instance, due to their policies on women’s and LGBTQ+ rights, and she serves as chair of the ITSA Foundation, which advocates for universal basic income. Much of her coaching work involves helping clients reconcile their values with their need to make a certain living in middle age or beyond.

“If you wake up one day and realize how fucked up the system is, and you’re complicit in it, and yet you have to pay for college tuition or hockey, I’m your girl,” she says.

Chris Lynch, often called the Punk Rock VC, followed a somewhat similar trajectory. Now the CEO of AtScale, a software company that builds data layers that sit between corporate data and AI tools, he got into bands like the Sex Pistols and Buzzcocks at an early age. Lynch spent some of his young adulthood playing bass in bands of his own. It was fun, but it wasn’t going to pay the bills, he says.

“At a certain point, life happened, and before I knew it, I was married, had a kid, and I had to pay the rent,” he says. “And walking around with hoop earrings and spiked hair like Billy Idol wasn’t getting me a job, so I started in tech and sales by selling on the phone as I was sort of transitioning from my fantasy life into my reality life.”

Lynch, who still plays the occasional fundraiser gig for a charity he founded called Tech Tackles Cancer, says he realized some of the same things that excited him about music also played well in sales and entrepreneurship. All provided a degree of independence, rewarded results over pedigree, and encouraged Lynch to be his authentic self, he says.

“I’m authentic, I don’t hide,” he says. “If I want to say ‘fuck,’ I say ‘fuck.’ If I want to take my shirt off to make a point, I do it.”

Lynch says he doesn’t think of himself as a sellout, partly since his primary motivation is to “do great shit with great people” rather than simply make money. The money he has made has enabled projects like the cancer charity, and his work and investments have revolved around disruptive, risk-taking businesses, he says.

“They’re all tilting at windmills,” he says. “That’s the punk rock ethos, you know. I don’t think that the Sex Pistols are giving back their royalties.”

Why punk works in business

Certainly, part of punk’s appeal in the business world comes from its association with risk-taking, improvisation, and ignoring red tape. “Having taught MBAs for years, I found lots of managers that could explain in great detail with a lot of big words about why they couldn’t achieve anything,” says Peter Cook, author of Punk Rock People Management and “dean” of a consultancy called The Academy of Rock. “And the punk ethos is getting on stage and doing it.”

Caroline Moore, the author of Punk Rock Entrepreneur: Running a Business Without Losing Your Values, says she didn’t even particularly think of her photography and design work as a business until she was contacted by a group teaching high school students about entrepreneurship. Over time, she realized it could be worth publishing a book documenting what she’d learned along the way, including lessons she’d absorbed growing up alongside DIY punk musicians.

“I think there is a culture among people in that group that they’re just going to do the thing,” she says.

Generally, punk’s outsider spirit can overlap more than one might expect with the mythos of the self-made entrepreneur and scrappy startup, says Iain Ellis, a senior lecturer at the University of Kansas and author of a book about punk culture and its influence. “The irony of the outsider is that it taps into the very myths that businesses love and that branders love,” he says. “Because what is the outsider if it’s not the classic rugged individualist?”

And, he points out, the success of the biggest punk bands was facilitated by capitalist enterprises like major record labels.

“Punk was always, has always been, and will always be business,” says Ellis. “The very mediation of punk and the communication of punk came through business.”

DIY doesn’t mean doing it alone

But punk is only individualistic to a point. Lynch is quick to say that one of the most important lessons he learned from the music world is the importance of personal relationships. And when punks talk about DIY, they’re usually really talking about doing things in conjunction and solidarity with friends and community.

“The thing about punk that I really love so much is that we all showed up to each other’s shows,” says Jenelle Isaacson Etzel, founder and CEO of Living Room Realty in Portland, Oregon.

Etzel, who also runs the Joy Punk Podcast, gradually got into real estate after playing in various punk bands, including a touring band called Spread Eagle, around the early 2000s, and meeting another musician who rented out rooms in her house to subsidize her creative lifestyle. Etzel found that other real estate brokers, even in famously countercultural Portland, were primarily geared toward traditional couples looking for the proverbial white picket fence. She began her business by catering to others with less traditional backgrounds and educating them about the options available.

“It really struck a chord,” she says. “People for the first time started seeing themselves reflected in a real-estate website or in a flyer.”

Her business has since expanded. Living Room Realty now has a team of licensed real estate agents, along with property management and maintenance divisions. As the city has grown more expensive, she’s found herself working with more groups of friends looking to buy property together rather than individuals going it alone. She is still intent on helping outsiders who might not believe owning a home is achievable—“how do we get them into the mosh pit of home ownership, so to speak”—and encourages her employees to be their authentic selves with clients.

Of course, as Etzel’s career has evolved and her experience broadened, she’s also found herself taking positions that might be alien to a young punk musician, like explaining to friends why commercial landlords can’t simply lower rents to fill unattractive retail vacancies without running afoul of lenders. “I just think too often we want to point to a bad guy, rather than look at the entire system that everyone’s under,” she says.

The second mountain

It’s likely some of punk’s appeal in the corporate world comes from the age of typical business leaders. They’re old enough for nostalgia for the music of their youth to outweigh their reflexive cringe at seeing it referenced in the office, yet young enough not to find a now-50-year-old counterculture threatening.

Punks & Pinstripes, the New York group, guides successful people through what its founder, Greg Larkin, calls the “second mountain.” That’s a point where they’ve achieved traditional worldly success and are looking for something more personally meaningful. The goal for group events is to move beyond what he derisively calls a “crush-it summit,” meaning the kind of professional meetup where businesspeople simply boast about their achievements. Instead, members openly discuss their struggles, concerns, and needs, then find the mentoring and support they need.

“It’s a palpable, visceral barrier you walk through,” he says. “Candid does not even begin to describe it.”

And while some of the group’s sentiment might sound closer to “Is That All There Is?” than “I Wanna Be Sedated,” and not all members share his lifelong affinity for punk music, Larkin says the energy and solidarity remind him of visiting venues like CBGB as a teenager. (Larkin is also the founder of Bowery315, a consultancy named for CBGB’s onetime Manhattan address, now home to a location of the rock-inspired luxury clothing store John Varvatos).

Punks & Pinstripes events, like an upcoming weeklong retreat to a Tuscan villa with prices starting at $4,000 plus transportation, might still be a far cry from the Lower East Side of the 1970s. But Larkin argues the contradiction isn’t as big as it may seem. After all, David Bowie was a famously successful entrepreneur and financial innovator, and other punk rockers have found worldly success through music or other fields, says Larkin. He also points to Beto O’Rourke in Texas politics and Justin Brannan’s transition from New York hardcore punk to Bear Stearns and, later, the New York City Council.

“None of those things are like, ‘Wow, you sold out, man,’” Larkin says. “No, he grew up. We have kids, we have jobs, we have mortgages. People are not one-dimensional.”

investment News