Ep. 49: From X-mas Jammies to The Amazing Race...The Holderness Family

[00:00:00] Mall of America for more than 30 years, it has been a retail leader and an international destination. And it remains the largest mall in the U.S. Not to mention it welcomes millions of guests from around the world. It's huge, but it's also so much more.

[00:00:15] In this podcast, you're going to hear the real stories of how it started and why it continues to thrive. You'll hear about challenges we faced along the way and what you can learn from them. We will feature guests and experts from all walks of life and business.

[00:00:28] And along the way, you'll laugh, learn and maybe even change the way you look at things. So if you're a fan of the mall, a brand new visitor, an entrepreneur or a dreamer, prepare to dive deep into So Much More.

[00:00:41] This podcast is presented by the Bloomington Convention and Visitors Bureau. Hello and welcome to this episode of So Much More, a Mall of America Podcast. I'm Dan Jasper, your host today. I am really excited and a bit intimidated, I might add. Please don't be.

[00:00:58] To have our guests on that are joining me today, because these two folks were probably the first Internet influencers before Internet influencing was even a game, right? You're among the first crop that came about. We are OGs.

[00:01:13] You are. And that to say that we've been doing this for 10 years and that's OG. Yeah, that's a world. That's a long time on the Internet world. Well, my guests, for those who don't know, are Penn and Kim Holderness,

[00:01:28] the famous Holderness family who you had fame prior to this. But in 2013, you had a video on YouTube that went viral. Xmas pajamas, Christmas pajamas. And I remember being in the office and everyone watching it and going, who are these people? This is awesome.

[00:01:46] It was so much fun. You made our holiday season that year for everyone here at the Mall of America offices. Just have to say that. And you also are visiting the Twin Cities today because you have a new book out and the book is ADHD.

[00:02:01] I'm reading it is awesome. A guide to mostly thriving with ADHD. It's a book that I had the pleasure of reading last night. And I want to begin by welcoming you and thanking you both for writing this because it's an awesome book. Oh, thank you.

[00:02:15] Welcome to Mall of America. How does it feel? Big. We have not actually been in the mall yet. We've been pre-signing books, but we've gone through a bunch of like storage areas and they're gigantic. And they're they're like it's shockingly tidy. I know.

[00:02:31] I feel like we're in the back of Disney World right now. But like, yes, but clean, but clean. Maybe even. Yeah, yeah. It's an awesome place. I love it here. And you've seen one tenth of one percent of them all. Right. This place is massive.

[00:02:43] I feel like there needs to be a mayor. I feel like there it's its own city. It needs its own like resources. They had a reality show for the mall. We should let him know. We actually did have a reality show. That was my project.

[00:02:56] Right. I talked to one of the guys who's with us today about it. He's Mall of America. Yes, it was awesome. That's all I want to talk about. OK, that's what this podcast is about. We had a full season and it was so much fun.

[00:03:07] And it is like a city. We have more than 10,000 people that work in this building, believe it or not. So it's a big, big place. But I want to talk if we can start really quickly with how you started. You both have a background in news.

[00:03:20] Those were your careers. And and tell me how you met first. We met in a bar. Just being honest, it's a great place to meet people. Yeah, it's a good place to meet people. So we were both working in local news. I was working for a CBS affiliate.

[00:03:35] He was working for a Fox affiliate. But we had similar hours. And when you get off the news at eleven o'clock and there's nothing to do. So we all the reporters from all the stations would hang out at the same spot. So that's how I met.

[00:03:47] And did you kind of know from that very first meeting that, hey, there's something special here. So we were both dating other people. But as those things found their end. Yeah, I don't know how to say this, but I liked her more than the person

[00:04:04] I think that I like. And I really liked the person I was dating, but I was very intrigued by her. And she mentioned like the girl I was dating mentioned it in the car on the way out.

[00:04:13] She's like, you turned like red when you were talking to Kim. No, I didn't. Of course, I wouldn't know. But anyway, like we're married now and have kids. So I feel OK telling the story seems to have worked out. Yeah. Yeah. Life does work out, doesn't it?

[00:04:27] And then tell us how you I've watched Christmas jammies many times. I've watched it like three times in the last day because I wanted to refresh my memory. Tell us why that came about, how that came about. And you got like 15 million views within a week or something.

[00:04:41] Walk us through that process and how that began this journey. Well, we couldn't get our kids to sit still for a Christmas card. So we made a video of them instead of a Christmas card and sent it out the year before we did. We did this.

[00:04:55] Yeah. So the one that went viral was our second annual one of these. But we made a bigger deal out of this one because Kim had convinced me to quit my job and go to work with her. Yeah. So I started, you know, social media was new.

[00:05:08] So, you know, social media management. Like, what does that even mean? And video production. And I felt like I couldn't promise him a paycheck, but I feel like he could edit the videos and shoot the videos. And that was the plan.

[00:05:21] So I felt like we needed to produce a video that was fun and snappy and maybe, you know, like my aunt would share it and somebody in town would see it and they would hire us. We had no intention of it going viral like it did.

[00:05:36] Yeah, but it but it did. And it was so much fun. And in fact, the verse that you sing in that video, you talk about Penn leaving his job. And it was kind of an announcement to write.

[00:05:46] It was beyond a holiday. It was a holiday card. Video card. We hope that maybe our parents and grandparents would share it with their friends and say, look, we need to hire these people. They are out of work.

[00:05:57] And we thought maybe a couple of thousand people would watch it. And obviously that it was exponentially more than that. And we were smart enough because we wanted our parents to tell their friends to put a just an email

[00:06:09] and a website on the screen at the very end. And so we got 10000 emails. Some of them, 9000 of them were perverts. Who were very curious about my wife and her situation. But like 1000 of them were legitimate business inquiries.

[00:06:27] And so that's kind of how we built Green Room, which was our our business where we do we do videos for others like. Yeah, like these guys are doing right here. And just to fast forward a couple of years later, we realized, oh, hang on.

[00:06:39] We were we onto something when it was just us making our own stuff and putting it on YouTube. Yeah. So then that's how we it took us after Christmas jammies like three years before we started doing this, whatever in the heck this is full time.

[00:06:53] So it wasn't an overnight success, right? It takes time. And we're going to talk about that in a little bit. But as I recall, so first of all, can I sorry, not to touch topics really quickly. Is there an opportunity to view the first Christmas card video card?

[00:07:07] It's out there. I have to look that one up. I haven't seen that one. OK. It was the second one that went viral. And that's the one that I've seen. And it even says, I think in graphics, this is year two or something.

[00:07:17] Yeah. And then I remember our team at the offices seeing it. I want to say it was on Facebook and not YouTube. Is that right? I'm trying to remember back then. So it was on YouTube, but Facebook was the vehicle through which people were sharing it.

[00:07:31] That's how I saw it. And that was when you could embed a video and put it on Facebook because they weren't doing native videos on Facebook yet. Yeah. That's a long story, but basically that's one of the reasons Facebook decided that they wanted to start

[00:07:44] uploading native videos because they were just sending people to another website. They're sending people to YouTube. Yeah. That doesn't make any sense. Right. So I'd love to talk about the book. You are our guest at Mall of America today. We are so honored to have you.

[00:07:56] And you're going to do a book signing and you're going to do a Q&A with our guests and maybe some surprises, because I just heard a little music being played as well. I'm just saying. That is very possible. It is possible. It will have already happened. Yes.

[00:08:11] While you're watching this. So it won't be a surprise. Yeah. So yeah, we're going to sing some stuff. Awesome. I love that so much. Thank you for doing that. Talk a little bit about the book and why you wrote it,

[00:08:22] because you both wrote this book and participated fully in it and what you're hoping to accomplish with it. I wrote the book because I didn't have the book for myself when I was a kid. Yes. I was a weird kid.

[00:08:36] I mean, I had a lot of positive energy, but I also had a tough time listening to the end of people's stories. I emotionally flooded a time which meant I would cry at the drop of a hat. I would also be so over the moon full of joy

[00:08:51] that people might have a tough time discerning it from being hysterical. And there was no book like this. There was no real diagnosis in the 80s for children. If there was, my family and my community didn't know about it. And so over the course of time,

[00:09:09] learning how to get by with it and also just put some systems in place to get through with it, realizing that there were a lot of people along the way who helped me and probably the most important one early on

[00:09:22] was my mother and then later on was my wife. So the second big reason I wrote the book was when I got older and started raising a family and having children, a lot of those things that I struggled with as a kid started happening again,

[00:09:36] real executive functioning issues, emotional issues. And it was time for another deep dive, and that's where the book came from. And from your perspective, Kim? I will say, when I first met Penn in that bar, I walked in and I saw him doing the worm.

[00:09:53] And I was like, oh, that man is mine. And so all of the things I fell in love with, I could say are his ADHD. I mean, it's his spontaneity, his creativity. He's such an outside the box thinker and so fun.

[00:10:06] I mean, all of that was his ADHD. When we had kids and we were running a business together, yeah, it became, you know, things fell through the cracks. By the way, I'm not perfect to live with either. Like I've been very honest.

[00:10:20] I have diagnosed anxiety, so I'm not perfect in this. I'm not a peach, always a peach to live with. So I really admire that he wanted to know more about how his brain worked. And we were able through that, I mean, this is research-based.

[00:10:37] So just the things we learned and we thought we knew a lot about it, it really changed everything with how we view ADHD. Yeah, and this is, you have a massive presence on social media, right? Facebook, Instagram, TikTok. You have your own podcast. You have your own website.

[00:10:59] I was in preparation for today. I was watching some of your TikToks. And I love, there's so many funny ones that are hilarious, but they're also honesty and vulnerability there. And a couple of recent ones that you both posted individually was,

[00:11:14] Kim, I wanna say you were in your closet, on the floor it looked like. And talking about the book and the importance and part of the struggles with dealing with ADHD as somebody who supports someone who has that and loves somebody.

[00:11:29] And Penn, I think yours was in your car and I think you were talking about your parents. And I wish they had had this book when you were a boy. So from a personal perspective, how is it to share your story and be so vulnerable

[00:11:44] and also funny, right? I have gone through times in my life where I was really, really struggling. And for example, after I had my children, I had a really bad postpartum depression and anxiety. And that was long enough ago, like 14 and 17 years ago,

[00:12:04] that there weren't the internet conversations about it and about mental health. And it just wasn't something people talked about. And the only thing that was being marketed to moms was like, isn't this the happiest day of your life? Isn't this the best feeling?

[00:12:21] Don't you want it to never end? And I was like, dude, I gotta wrap this up. This is really hard. So I wish there were some, I was looking and searching for honesty on the internet. And so I found once we make these really goofy videos,

[00:12:37] which is authentically us, that is very much us, but also we have some real struggles. And I find that if you can just be yourself and be brave enough to be vulnerable, there's such connection. And if we can be those people for others,

[00:12:57] then I think it's totally worth whatever weird things come because of it. You joked earlier, Pen, about that first video having 10,000 comments or something, 9,000 of them were creeps or whatever. I forget what word you used, but it wasn't a good one. I think I said perverts.

[00:13:12] I wasn't going to go there, but yes. I think that is what you said. The internet can be a really challenging place. And so two questions, two part question for both of you. One is your first video that went viral featured your kids.

[00:13:28] And they've been parts of other videos and they've grown up, right? That was 11 years ago now. How do you deal with that from a parenting perspective and how has that impacted them, your fame, your success? And then how do you deal with the negative stuff

[00:13:44] that happens on social? Good questions. Yeah, those are a lot of good questions. Okay, so let's start with this. When we made the Christmas Jammies video, we thought there were going to be a lot fewer people watching it. When it became viral and my kids became well-known

[00:13:56] because of it and we're showing up on Good Morning America and The Today Show, we didn't give them the choice to be on that video. So that's something that's on us, right? We had no idea. From then on out, their choice was a part of it.

[00:14:10] It was if you guys want to be a part of this, do it. But still trying to make them a little bit aware the older they get, like here's what's happening. Having said all of that, I'm 100% sure that I have screwed my kids up

[00:14:25] in some way because everyone does. We all have. Yeah, everyone has screwed up their kids. But I don't know how. I don't know if this is what I've done wrong. There may be something else that I've done wrong. But the exciting part about it is that

[00:14:39] we're 11 years past this and they seem to be two of the most incredible human beings on the face of the earth in spite of us. Despite of us, they are wonderful. They are empathetic. I will say that every video that we put out there,

[00:14:53] we want it to be something that our kids would enjoy, would laugh at and might even teach people a lesson about how to be a better person. And if some of that got through to them, that's fantastic, but really,

[00:15:08] we took this job on so that I could spend more time with them. Because I was working in local news. The negative stuff, like that's been a dance, right? When you first get a thought piece on Deadspin written specifically about you, which has happened a couple of times,

[00:15:26] when that happens, the first time it's really rough. It's because there's also comments underneath it and you realize that while you normally are in an echo chamber of your own website where people say nice things, there is stuff outside of that

[00:15:39] and these people are certainly entitled to their opinion. But that hit me pretty hard the first time I saw something like that. Hit me even harder when I saw something about that about other members of my family, although most of it's directed toward me

[00:15:52] because it's such an easy target. We have evolved to taking those things with a grain of salt, but also not completely ignoring them because I think they're valuable opinions. I'm gonna go back to the kids real quick. Yeah, sorry. No, no, no.

[00:16:09] First of all, we've always paid them. So somebody had a message just like turn on monetization. Like we didn't realize you could make money on YouTube. So we were kind of late to the game on that but made money off that

[00:16:20] and we opened up savings accounts for them. And any monetization we ever made on that or brand deal, like we've always paid them and now they get regular paychecks and now because we had no idea and I feel really naive.

[00:16:35] I feel so naive to have put my kids out there like that and they were too young to really consent. Now, absolutely. But now it's so funny because they're in school and they're in sports and they're so busy. So really they aren't a big part of our videos

[00:16:50] and have not been for years. For years they've not been a huge part of our videos but they appear because when I was a teenager and I needed cash, I had to mow the lawn. Yeah, yeah. So now my daughter literally said like,

[00:17:02] hey mom, she wanted this like new tennis outfit from Lululemon. And she's like, can I be in a video? Because it says Holderness family, we baseline pay them. If she's in a video, she knows she gets more money. And so they're like,

[00:17:16] what kind of videos do you have coming up and what does that pay? What would that pay? And so it's great. They see it as a job. And so, but yes, I think that we, I do feel like that is the thing

[00:17:28] they're gonna be talking to their therapist about. And I totally accept that feedback. Yeah. But you, sorry. I love that you said your kids have turned out, and they're gonna have their own issues. We all do, right? But if you love them and support them,

[00:17:43] it's amazing how life works out. As a single dad, I can attest that I did so many things that could have screwed my son up really, really badly, but he's a good guy. And I have three great grandkids, right? As a result, which is amazing.

[00:17:57] I wanted to ask really quickly to switch topics, the amazing race. Oh yes. I was meeting this morning with a group of local military people and veterans, and one of them, Major Eels, I wrote it down because she's a member of the Minnesota National Guard,

[00:18:11] and I said, I'm gonna be interviewing you later. She went, ah! The Holderness! Please say hi, please say hi. So she says hi, Major Eels. Hello. From the Minnesota National Guard. Hello, Major, I hope if she's watching. Apparently her and her husband are huge fans

[00:18:24] of that show, and the very first episode they bet on who's going to win, and she picked you. No way! So she won big time. Wow, we were not everybody's, it's so funny. Like there are websites that do that. They have like little pools and stuff.

[00:18:40] We've learned after being on the show. We were very few people's pick. Well, we were old. Yeah, we were older than most people. And you ended up winning, which is amazing. Amazing. Tell me about that process a little bit. Why you decided to do that,

[00:18:58] because that had to be a decision to make, right? And then maybe your favorite or least favorite challenge along the way. Well, so the decision to make it was largely tipped by our daughter, Lola. We were on the fence about it. It's a month away from your family

[00:19:15] and they take away your phones and your ability to communicate with them. So you can't call them, right? They changed that after COVID, but the first, and our season was- And I think, by the way, just for our season. I think I don't think-

[00:19:27] Oh, they went back to knocking. Okay, so anyway, for the most part, you have no contact with your family. They have to, it's because they have to make sure that no one knows when you're getting eliminated, right? It just gives it away if they call you.

[00:19:40] So anyway, we weren't sure if we wanted to do it. Like going a month on the internet without posting is terrifying. So we were gonna have to batch a lot of stuff ahead of time. And our daughter hears us having this conversation

[00:19:53] and she goes, dad, what are you gonna remember more? Like some random February where you worked all month or the time you went on the Amazing Race. And so A, it's a good argument. B, it was our kid giving us her blessing, which was really important.

[00:20:09] And it didn't mean we didn't miss them terribly the entire time we were there, but we had some buy-in from the kids and that was the reason why we decided to do it. And we love that show as a family. It's one of our favorites.

[00:20:19] So we didn't do it to increase any sort of, and it didn't necessarily. We love the show, but people who watch TV and then people who are on the internet are two different populations of people. So it did not really grow our platform

[00:20:31] and that's not why we did it. And you asked about the favorite. I would say, well obviously winning. My least favorite moment, there is a challenge if everybody watched where you had to turn over rocks for hours until you found like a gold coin underneath.

[00:20:49] And I got there first because I'm so good at navigating. So I was there and it was like, I just kept on thinking, I'm like, I'm in the wrong spot. I'm doing this wrong. I'm like, I'm not doing it right. It was terrible. It was awful.

[00:20:59] And I actually had to, so I had to do this motion, which is like, I'm flipping it up a straight up cause you had to put them back in the same, like very specific, like, you could just flip it like this. You had to.

[00:21:11] You didn't have to turn them back over though. We found that out later. Well, it said you did in the instructions. It said you did in the instructions and I'm a rule follower. So I came, my wrist for the rest of the race was really, really swollen.

[00:21:23] I ended up having that wrist surgery. Oh wow. From that one challenge. Cause there was like a weird tendon that like popped or something like that. So that was my least favorite. But I love that your daughter encouraged you that kids can be insightful.

[00:21:37] They can see things that we don't see sometimes, right? And I think that's really cool. Talking about your family and your production, you have your own company. You have employees, I believe as well, right? And so you're small business owners. There's some challenges and worries.

[00:21:54] Is everything rosy or are there times when you go, oh my gosh, what did we do? Oh my gosh. I'm gonna quote this guy who's a friend of my dad's who asked because friends of your dad's always wanna like figure out

[00:22:06] what it is that we do for a living. Like what, you do what? And so I explained it to him as clearly as I could. And he had the best comeback I've ever heard because we're content creators and we send something out

[00:22:16] and then we have to think about the next thing immediately. He said, so do you basically wake up every morning unemployed? Yeah. So every morning we wake up unemployed. Kind of. And so I would say it has been as we're sitting here right now,

[00:22:31] it is so wonderful to be here. We're so excited to meet everybody who's, we heard there's a line of people out there which is insane. So that's gonna be a good day. Yes. Yeah, but tomorrow we're unemployed. And so which I know by the way,

[00:22:44] I know there's a lot of, we have unemployed people in our family right now. They're struggling for jobs. So I know that sounds like super privileged but when you have to, we're entrepreneurs. But if we stop. But if we, so we do,

[00:22:53] we have three people who work with us full time and we offer benefits and we offer, like we try to do that because they take care of us and we need to take care of them. Or so our marriage is better

[00:23:03] and we've been able to do better things because we have them. But there are, I mean, even this week, there were phone calls we got about different sort of projects. And I'm like, oh my gosh, I just wanna go back and work in the news.

[00:23:14] Like there's a lot. There's a lot of pressure. And I've heard the two of you talk about how the pressure is on to consistency every day, doing something and coming up with something. Do you take any days off? Yeah. Sort of. Can I say sort of?

[00:23:32] And what do you do? Oh, we go to the beach. We try to sit in silence, look at the ocean. We go for a long walks. But I mean, even on those trips, it's the two of us. An idea is gonna pop up. Like something's gonna happen, right?

[00:23:47] So I will say A, yes, we do take days off. But B, I love this, what we do because I think we get to look at the world with a very unique lens. I mean, we were sitting there signing books,

[00:24:00] looking out the window and we saw the IKEA. And we're like, oh, that's where we're like, we saw a funny episode. That's where relationships are most challenged. They go to die. Yeah, but we saw a TV episode about that.

[00:24:11] I'm like, wouldn't that be funny if we went to IKEA and found the things that people fought about most at IKEA or something? I'm like, what could we do that's super funny? And I just love to be able to walk through life asking the question, is that funny?

[00:24:24] How could we make that funny? So when we say we're never off, it's because of stuff like that. But I sort of love that. I love it too. Do you really play pickleball? I just have to ask. Yes, yes. Not well. We do. I don't play well.

[00:24:38] He's really good. So we made that video, our first one after playing 90 minutes of pickleball and we were both completely hooked immediately. Doesn't mean that we're good. No. I think I've gotten okay because I play with her

[00:24:49] and I also play with my son who is like a prodigy. Just picked up the paddle and it was really good. But it's honestly, it kind of vibes with our entire philosophy in life, which is have a little fun. Don't take yourself too seriously.

[00:25:04] Move on to the next one, right? Maybe have a beer afterwards. And it's a little cringy but it's fun. You're unapologetically corny making team names. I love it. Brian time. Quick gherking around and all that. It's all these really funny bits and pieces

[00:25:22] and the community embraces all of it. And so I absolutely love it. We've been to a couple of professional events and they're just as fun. We're running out of time. So I hate to wrap this up. Was this turbo time? Turbo round time? I'm so excited about this.

[00:25:34] It's just about there, just about turbo time. But before we do that, your book is amazing. New York Times bestseller list. Where can people find it? Obviously anywhere, Barnes and Noble. I would just type ADHD is awesome into your computer and see what happens. And you'll find it.

[00:25:49] We love the Barnes and Noble. We love an independent bookstore. That's the other thing I was gonna say. So if you have a local bookstore, they, I guarantee they'll be so psyched to see you. Most of them have our book. I love it.

[00:26:00] And if they don't, they can get it for free. And it's a really good book. And I told Kim earlier that I loved her, a note from Kim portions of it because they're really helpful. Really quick, just a few quick questions about what you know about Minnesota.

[00:26:11] We have like less than a minute to do this. How many lakes are in the state of Minnesota? 127,000. No. I would say 132. It's the land of 10,000 lakes. 10,000. But we actually have 12,000 or so. What state has the most shoreline? California, Alaska, or Florida? It's gonna be. Florida. Florida.

[00:26:31] It's Minnesota with all of our lakes. You didn't put that in the list. I did not put that in the list. What is our state bird in Minnesota? The smart ass, cause like you've asked three really smart ass questions. Okay, well, okay, gotcha. Did you say that?

[00:26:44] No, if you would have given me a second, I would have said loon. I would have said. Hot dish or casserole. Oh, hot dish. Yes, thank you. Pop or soda? Pop. Yes, thank you. One of our coworkers is the Midwest neighbor in our videos. Love it.

[00:26:57] So she's taught us all. You've been schooled. I love that. And what state in the country has the best state fair? Minnesota. Yes, you're right. And you need to come to it sometime. Penn, Kim, thank you so much for joining us on this episode of So Much More.

[00:27:12] Thank you for coming to Mall of America and meeting all of your fans. We appreciate it. And we wish you a very happy day and a happy year. Thank you. It's so nice to meet you. Maybe we'll come back by the mall and see what you're up to.

[00:27:22] Like say, I don't know, late early December. I'm coming. Holiday season, that's all I'm saying. And for all of our listeners and people following us, thank you so much for joining us on this episode of So Much More. Thank you for tuning into today's episode

[00:27:38] of So Much More. If you want to hear more, be sure to subscribe to our podcast wherever you find your favorites, including Spotify, Apple or Google Podcast. And you can also watch a video cast on YouTube. Go to podcast.mallofamerica.com to leave a review,

[00:27:54] ask a question or give us an idea for the show. Until next time, thanks for listening. So Much More is presented by the Bloomington Convention and Visitors Bureau, the official destination marketing organization for the city of Bloomington, Minnesota. Before your next trip to Mall of America,

[00:28:11] visit bloomingtonmn.org for answers to all your travel questions, deals and packages for hotel stays and so much more.