Ep. 212: HODINKEE’s Ben Clymer on Agency, Permanence, and the Talismans of Life

Ben Clymer grew up in a New York suburb, raised by middle-class public school teachers and enamored by his grandfather’s swagger and style. An Omega Speedmaster, a gift from said grandfather, is the piece that captured his heart and sets his story in motion. A painstakingly shy student, he began to gain self-confidence in high-school and a need to differentiate in college. In 2008 he started a tiny blog, HODINKEE, a passion-project about watches that gained traction and sent him on a mission to get a Master’s in Journalism. Since then, HODINKEE has led to creative collaborations with the most prestigious watch brands and famous rockstars, and grown into a multi-channel platform that has transformed the world of luxury watches. 

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Ben Clymer: People and companies that you admire so much, it doesn't get any better than

Amy Devers: Hi everyone, I’m Amy Devers and this is Clever. Today I’m talking to Ben Clymer, Founder and Executive Chairman of beloved watch site Hodinkee. Ben is widely considered to be a leading voice in the wristwatch industry. He is regularly quoted in major publications, including The New York Times, Reuters, Forbes, Departures, GQ, and the Financial Times, and was dubbed “The High Priest of Horology” by The New York Times in 2013. He has acted as a consultant and guest speaker for Apple, and was named to “The Hypebeast Hundred” as one of the 100 most important influencers in global culture in both 2013 and 2014. Ben founded Hodinkee as a watch blog in 2008 to create a more welcoming space for people to talk watches, and has since grown the platform into a multi-channel destination for people to easily access the world of watches and horology, including: print, digital, video and podcast content; an e-commerce platform; and services. He holds a master’s in Journalism from Columbia, and now can add watch designer to his resume as well, having recently designed a limited edition G-Shock in partnership with friend and long-time collaborator musician John Mayer. As you’ll hear, he’s disarmingly candid with a refreshing perspective… so… no time like the present… here’s Ben.

Ben Clymer: My name is Ben Clymer, I live in a place called Waccabuc, New York. I work in a place called New York, New York, and I am the Founder of a website called HODINKEE and HODINKEE started out as a blog, like a literal blog in the 2008 terminology, and I started writing about watches because I loved watches and I love beautiful things and I love telling stories. Now HODINKEE is the largest platform for watches in the world. We sell watches, we're an authorized dealer of 40 brands. We write about them, we design them, we create products and stories and narratives that we hope excite and educate and inform. 

Amy: I love all of that, and we're going to have a good time talking all through it. Let's just wind it all back to the early 80s. Born and raised in Brighton, New York, yes? (Laughter)

Ben: Brighton, New York, and suburb of Rochester. Probably the first time Brighton has ever been mentioned on any podcast of note. (Laughs) So was raised in Upstate New York. Both of my parents were effectively public school teachers. So I think the first thing to note, and frankly a big part of the reason behind why HODINKEE worked and why I kind of work, is that I wasn't raised in the context of 'luxury' at all. I can be very honest with you now and say I own a watch and a car that are worth more than the house I grew up in. It really came, this idea of luxury and what I do now, it was really foreign to me. 

Growing up in that environment, I knew that well made things existed but I seldom got to appreciate them or really understand them. They weren't really part of my life at all growing up, except for when I would go visit my maternal grandfather down in Florida or here in the New York area. He was a hero of mine because A, I just found him to be incredibly charming and incredibly interesting. Not in like a hyper masculine way, but like a man that could 'handle' things and wasn't afraid of things. Not that anybody else in my world really was, but he really lived life in a way that I really admire. 

He drove a Mercedes, which again was completely foreign in Rochester, New York, to me. He wore a gold Rolex. He wore a Patek Philippe which is a very high end Swiss watch. I was just fascinated by his lifestyle; I would say frankly more so than the lifestyle of my immediate family and certainly others in Rochester. So when I was 16 years old he gave me a watch which was an Omega Speedmaster that I am actually looking at. It was in the back cover of Entrepreneurial Magazine some years ago called 'The Gift of a Lifetime.' 

He gave me this watch when I was 16 and it was probably, I don't know, $1,000 watch at the time. But just a thing that was so far beyond comprehension for me as A, just the financial value of it was extraordinary for a 16 year old kid. I was literally a pizza cook at the time so a $1,000 watch was just crazy. But beyond that it was the first thing that I owned that had material quality. You can't see it here but I'm kind of rubbing my forefinger and thumb here because it just felt different. I had many watches. I had Casios which I referenced for the watch recently that I designed. I had Timex’s. I was into mechanical and analog things but nothing felt like this. 

Amy: Okay. I've got to stop you because you've already told so much of your story and I have all of these follow-up questions. 

Ben: Okay, got it. 

Amy: This is great. I have questions about your parents who were effectively public school teachers. Growing up as you said, in a middle class kind of environment, where was the priority placed? It wasn't on luxury things. Was it on academics? Was it on working hard? Was it on morals? What was it? 

Ben: Yeah, I would say less so the latter. It was always a very moralistic life but I mean that wasn't what I would say is a priority. Yeah, I think it was really working hard and academics. And I don't want to say 'just getting by,' but there really wasn't this idea of saying, 'hey, what do you dream of doing?'. 'What do you aspire to be?' Maybe when I was a child, a young boy, maybe I wanted to be a baseball player or an astronaut, I frankly don't really remember. But it wasn't the type of really kind of dream focused environment where it really was saying, 'Hey, do you want to be a painter some day? Do you want to be a writer some day?' I think deep down I wanted to be successful, whatever that meant. I wanted to be able to afford the things that I saw in my grandparents' life. But I think more than that I wanted to be fulfilled and be in control of my own destiny. And I think what I really quickly ended up at, really in my early 20s, was I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to be creative in some way. 

Amy: So creativity comes in. Did you have any entrepreneurial role models or creative role models as a kid? 

Ben: Yeah, my grandfather was an entrepreneur. He was certainly the entrepreneurial role model for sure. 

Amy: Got it. 

Ben: They were like Upstate New York, big shot guys. You know the guys that are like wealthy friends' parents, things like that. But it wasn't like we were talking about Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, you know. It wasn't something like that was really at a global level. Just local entrepreneurs, small business owners. From a design perspective, that was always a big part of our life in a very, very subtle way. 

In many ways it kind of dissipated as we grew up because I think just the realities of life, the money that my father would spend on beautiful things just went towards taking care of myself and my sister. Again you can't see it because this office is incredibly messy, but there's a Beogram 2000 which is a Bang & Olufsen turntable around the corner here which was my father's turntable that he bought in the 1970s. I'm not sure if you're familiar, but Bang & Olufsen is a very high end, design-centric Danish stereo system. 

Amy: Sure, yes.

Ben: So him having Bang & Olufsen turntables in the 70s and then giving it to me and I had it set up in my bedroom as a teenager, I think says a lot about the environment in which we lived. My grandfather always had Macintosh stereo systems. My mother's first car when she was in her 20s was a BMW 02. Back then BMW was not a luxury car at all, it was just European. Imports didn't really exist at the time, in the last 60s, early 70s. So there was always this thread of great design and products in the home, but it really started to fade away as my sister and I grew up, simply I will assume because of economic reasons. But we would always go back and look at these things that were maintained in our house like the Bang & Olufsen turntable.

Amy: Okay. So it's not that you spent a lot of money on precious objects. But occasionally they were acquired, they were kept, they were cared for, and they were not archived, but they lived in your life for as long as possible. They weren't considered disposable.

Ben: That's exactly it. And cameras, I'm a photographer, we've since worked for Leica. My dad was a photographer, my grandfather was a photographer.

Amy: Okay, there's the creativity. 

Ben: Yeah, so I think the thread of 'archive' is interesting because these things were acquired, they were purchased before I was born in almost every single case. I have one recollection of my parents spending money on material objects or just nice things, and that was when my father turned 50 and they bought him a Rolex. That's kind of it. But there wasn't any excess money to spend on these things. It just wasn't a priority. I think the priority was really on getting by. 

Amy: That makes a lot of sense to me. Now to fill out the picture a little bit, this grandfather that you admired that was such a featured player in your early memories, were they snow birds in Florida or did they live there? 

Ben: Their parents immigrated around the First World War. They were born in Brooklyn, lower income folks. They then migrated just a little bit north into Queens, Long Island area so they were basically New Yorkers. Then when some success was achieved they became snow birds. I kind of think of them as snow birds. And this $1000 Omega Speedmaster, was this new? Vintage?

Ben: He bought it in the 90s. But he bought it in the 90s when he was probably in his early 70s. He wore it for probably five years and then gave it to me. So he purchased it new, but was worn, it was his. 

Amy: This watch that he had worn for five years, talk to me about why it was so important to you. And was part of that, the five years that it had spent on his wrist?

Ben: I think so. I think those are the years when boys become men and girls become women. But those were really formative years because you're starting to get a sense of who you might be or I was getting a sense of who I might be down the road. 

I went from being incredibly shy, painfully shy to the point where my parents were concerned about me socially, so I went from being incredibly shy, really I would cry at sleepovers even with my best friends, I really just didn't want to be around other people, to being incredibly sure of myself and frankly too sure of myself like I said, like every young man is for a certain phase of life. 

But it was during that period that I began to have confidence in myself in a material way. Where I thought, 'Hey, I don't have to, I don't want to say play by the rules, but I don't have to do things the way that my parents want me to, do things the way that my teachers want me, do things the way that my friends parents told their children to behave.' I could do things my own way and I began to kind of skirt the rules a little bit in middle school and high school in terms of attendance and sometimes skipping class here and there to go either be with my then girlfriend, or just drive around town and listen to music.I wasn't getting up to anything, you know. Just normal adolescent stuff, but I realized I was able to do that stuff and get by, and more than get by, succeed to some degree. It wasn't like I was Valedictorian or anything like that, but I was doing okay in school and I realized there was a different way to live your life. 

Amy: So you're learning the dance. And to lead your own part on the dance floor. 

Ben: Yeah, that's exactly it. And I think those are the years when I spent the most time with my grandfather and this is the watch he was wearing then. He was more known within the family to wear this gold Rolex, like day-to-day, kind of what you see in the 1970s, gangster stuff. But that wasn't the watch that really drew me to him, it was this Omega which was something else entirely. It was much more functional. It was much more understated. Much more elegant frankly, than a big gold Rolex. It was stainless steel, it had real purpose, it had functionality, and that watch really informed my own purview of design and certainly watch making for years to come. Still does. 

Amy: Okay, we're going to pick that apart a little bit more. You kind of touched on your teenage years as being transformational in that you were developing your own agency, your own navigation around the rules. 'How can I interpret the rules (laughs) and do what I need to do to spread my wings but also still get by so that I'm not foiling myself down the line.' And that's kind of important. Stage of life, because that agency is I guess what I consider to be at the core of all of our creativity. That agency, I think will show up in your confidence in all areas of your life. So spending all this time with your grandfather during that time, in what ways did he impact and influence your agency or your willingness to reinterpret the rules that were being shared with you? 

Ben: Yeah, again it's really interesting. I've never been asked this question. But I have very clear memories. He belonged to a country club in Florida as all elderly Jewish men do. The rules would be like, 'hey, you have tee off from whatever, this set of tees.' He wouldn't say fuck that, but his emotions said fuck that. We're just going to go and do this and I said, 'okay,' Nothing happened. There was no down side to playing from the blue tees instead of the white tees or whatever. The way that he would treat a waiter or waitress, a host or hostess, somebody selling him something, was just dramatically different than the way my parents interacted with people like that. Or frankly anybody else I knew interacted with them. 

It was much more; I'm going to say flirtatious but it wasn't like romantic flirtation. It was more an emotional, kind of playful 'dance' to borrow a term from you, that really felt engaging. It was really binary. It was like the most charming thing somebody could possibly think of on the other end, or it was the most obnoxious thing somebody would think of. There were times, and I have clear memories of both of those situations, where a waiter or a waitress, their pants were just charmed off of them and we got the table immediately instead of waiting for an hour or something. 

And then there were other situations where he would pull his little schtick and the waiter or waitress or the host or hostess would just kind of say, 'get out of here, who do you think you are?' (Laughs) I think witnessing that taught me a lot about A, you can shoot your shot so to speak, and if you get shot down, okay. His ego may have been bruised ever so slightly, but he lived to fight another day and he continued his life. And I think taking those shots on goal is what he probably taught me the most in those years. 

Amy: 'Taking those shots on goal,' I love that you distilled it down to that. How did he make his money? What was his entrepreneurial endeavor?

Ben: It was a different time; it was the 60s and 70s. He started a cigarette lighter business. 

Amy: Yeah, cool. It was a different time, I understand that. 

Ben: Yes. Different time, yeah. So he sold cigarette lighters basically in the 60s and 70s. This wasn't Zippo or Bic or a name that you would know, it's called Flamex. But he ended up selling it for some amount of money, I don't think a crazy amount, but something. And then he just had various other jobs. But he was self made and that was the narrative. I don't smoke cigarettes, I never have, obviously I don't support them, but it wasn't about the cigarettes or the cigarette lighters, it was about that he just did his own thing forever. 

Amy: Yes, okay. Describe to me what is factoring into your decision to eventually go to Syracuse.

Ben: Yeah, that's a pretty critical decision or turning point in my life because I'll be very transparent. I was disappointed that I didn't get into Warton and Boston College and Cornell and all the things that I believed myself smart enough to do, and I think frankly those around me also believed that. So I think when I wasn't accepted into the Ivy League schools in high school, I kind of got the slap on the wrist. Not from my parents, but I gave myself the slap on the wrist. Because junior and senior year, as I said, very, very quiet, very insular, very nerdy guy, junior and senior year I really started to dick around. 

I started to drink and smoke and go out with girls, and really just became extremely sure of myself. Frankly to an extreme degree, and because of that my grades slipped considerably. So when I didn't get into the schools that I, I don't know why, deemed myself intelligent enough to get into, that hurt in a material way. I ended up getting a full scholarship to Syracuse and I said it's free, my tuition is covered, I'll do this and I'll work really hard and that's it. So I think going to a school that I thought...

Amy: Hey, wait a second. So you got an ego check at this point and then you were self aware enough to take that and decide to turn it around. Instead of being defensive, mad, or 'fuck this then,' you were actually like, 'no, I still have an opportunity, now I think I better just adjust, course correct.'

Ben: Yeah, I don't know where I heard this line but it still sticks with me to this day, which is when I didn't get into Cornell where all my friends got into, or Penn or whatever, somebody said to me, “Real life is the great equalizer.” Where you go to school frankly doesn't mean that much and there are people that went to Harvard that now work for me. It means something but it doesn't mean anything. But it was really me figuring out a way to validate myself to myself, and maybe a little bit to the world with my parents and friends around me, but I wanted to succeed in a different way. So at Syracuse I found A, the first semester I did very well. I reapplied to Cornell, I got in. I chose not to go. I just said, 'I like my friends, I'm happy here, etc.'  

So I stayed at Syracuse, and that was formative, definitely. Again it taught me that, look there's big fish in little pond syndrome perhaps, and I think the experience in Syracuse was probably the best thing that ever happened to me because again I learned how to separate myself. Syracuse has, I don't know how many students, like 10,000. It's a sizable school. I was in this thing called the University 100 which was not necessarily the best grades, so the top 100 grades at university, but kind of the most promising. I found a way to really differentiate myself among the masses of students there. Again it wasn't via just pure GPA. It was by doing things. It was by instead of doing the study abroad program with Syracuse and the other schools around them, I said, “I'm going to apply to this thing at Oxford.” I was the only student at Syracuse that even applied. I got in and lived at Oxford for an entire year.

Amy: So is this also you sort of shooting your shot? And how much of this is charm? Have you started to polish your charm yet? (Laughs)

Ben: Yeah, I suppose. But look, had I not gotten into the Oxford program I would have just done the Syracuse program and that would have been probably fine. I just really wanted to differentiate myself, not because I felt I was better or worse. I just felt different and I think this idea of feeling different is kind of super salient because I felt that all along and I continue to feel it. I just wanted it. Even if I didn't feel different, I wanted to be different. 

Amy: Syracuse, you differentiated yourself among the masses. That sounds really formative to me in terms of you also claiming your agency and how you navigate the world, how you show up for yourself and others. After Syracuse, working for... wait, what did you study at Syracuse?

Ben: Business, kind of top level business because I was in this independent study program. Then basically computer science, information studies. I was always a tech guy, I built my own website when I was 15, I coded it in HTML. Then business which obviously lent itself very well to what I do now. I coded the first version of HODINKEE myself and I designed it, and I wrote it, and I took all the pictures. It was a blog. So that's what I studied there. 

Amy: Okay. So we have a couple of years before HODINKEE. Talk to me about that transition.

Ben: A lot of my friends ended up taking jobs at KPMG, the big four accounting firms which to me, even then I knew that was so fucking wrong for me, it wasn't even funny. So I ended up applying, I was in this, this is the dorkiest thing I've ever said I think, but I was in this business fraternity called the Delta Sigma Phi Fraternity. 

Via that I got connected to a gentleman who worked at a small boutique-y consulting agency in Tribeca called Acquis Consulting Group which was a really neat firm and cool offices. Everyone was kind of attractive and went to all the Ivy League schools. It was the kind of place that I dreamed of working, somehow got a job there, and that was like, 'okay everything I did at Syracuse was right to get me into this program.' I remember the only other person that was hired in this incoming class at this consulting group went to Warton. I was like, 'okay, I did it.' I can be on the same playing field as these guys.

Amy: For you, what did that mean? Was that about status or excellence? 

Ben: I think opportunity. I was quite sure that this was going to be the first job of a few, it wasn't like I saw myself staying there forever. But it was about opportunity to be around meaningfully intelligent thinkers. Not that they didn't exist at Syracuse, they did. They certainly did at Oxford. They did at my high school. But to be around that in a professional environment, it was cool. Cool in the early 2000 sense when working at Goldman Sachs was the coolest thing on earth, (laughs) which now it's not and I love Goldman Sachs, sorry guys. (Laughs) But it's not that cool any more, you know. Finance in New York was a thing 20 years ago. Everybody wanted to work at Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley or whatever. So my consulting company had big clients and one of our clients was Pfizer.

Pfizer had a drug called Lipitor which was literally the most valuable drug on earth, it's the cholesterol drug and it went off patent in one of the years that we were there. I forget the number but Lipitor represented like, I'm going to say this since I think it's correct, like a $20 billion a year piece of revenue for Pfizer. Just something enormous, capacious. It's literally the most valuable drug in history and it went off patent. That means you can make generics. All of a sudden anybody, you can get Lipitor for 10c on the dollar versus Lipitor. 

One of the projects we had was just kind of being around to think about that for Pfizer. I'm not a sports guy, but how do you replace Michael Jordan? You don't. You can find somebody that is pretty good but there's not going to be another Michael Jordan and there's not going to be another Lipitor. This was also during the years when Viagra became a thing. Viagra, again now there's generics of that, but back then this was the only erectile pill on the market. This is a massively valuable thing. I don't know if you remember, there were 60 Minutes segments on Viagra and what it would mean for the future of mankind. It was just a crazy thing. 

So we were there during the period that Viagra became a thing, literally the first year. And also the year that Lipitor went off patent. Again I was a kid, I didn't know anything, but to be in the room with my bosses and the people at Pfizer to talk about those two things in particular, and there was some kinds of moral discussions around Viagra in particular. It was just a wild experience as a very young person. Again I was not part of the conversation, I was just in the room and that was pretty weird. Pretty weird and pretty formative. 

Amy: What did you take away from that environment in terms of, I guess responsibility? And also witnessing that, I can imagine you wouldn't want to go back to being in a place where you didn't have access to it.

Ben: Yeah, I think that's exactly right. But I think the biggest take away, and this is maybe not what you're getting at but I'll just be honest, the biggest take away for me was that a lot of these guys were not that smart. 

Amy: Yeah. (Laughs) Yeah, no. I've been there, too. Like 'wait a second, there is so much failing upwards in this industry, how did you get here?'

Ben: Right. In real life.

Amy: Yeah. (Laughs)

Ben: It was not the CEO of Pfizer at all, that guy was actually incredibly intelligent. But the people around, the c suite of Pfizer and the consulting agency that I was with, and other people that were there, there were a lot of incredibly intelligent, thoughtful, kind, considerate people. And then there were a bunch of fucking idiots. It was really, again 'how did you get here, how is this in your hands?' That really just compounded the belief that I had had from Syracuse and slightly before, which was 'if not me, then who?' Why not take the shot? 

And I really saw it there at the consulting company. Again, some of them brilliant, absolutely, still in consulting, amazing. And others of them were really not. It also just made me thing, 'hey I can do this, I'm no dumber than this guy, this guy I might be dumber than but most guys I'm not.' That just allowed me to have more, I wouldn't say self confidence because I wasn't sure that I could do anything, but I just was propped up by this idea that I could take the shot and if I failed I would just continue my life and so be it, and the confidence to do that.

Amy: Okay, all right. So that lasted for how long? And then get me to the origin story of HODINKEE. And along the way, what is your relationship to watches or objects of value this whole time.

Ben: Sure. While I was at the consulting company I met a beautiful, intelligent woman that became my then girlfriend. But while I was in consulting I met a beautiful, intelligent woman that it was one of those moment where I just couldn't believe that she liked me back. That again really empowered me in a way that was as meaningful as any academic or professional experience. This woman was just so beautiful and so funny and so smart. She's the kind of woman that would just light up a room and again 

I just remember thinking to myself sometimes, 'how did this happen, how did I get here?' For the record my wife is not that woman, but just like that. The exact type of just glow around her. It really gave me the self confidence not as a professional, but as just a person, to believe in myself. That if this woman cared enough about me to spend her time with me, then I could try some more stuff. But I left the consulting company around the same she did. She wanted to go back to school to become a bio-mechanical engineer of all things. I was like, 'if you're going to leave, I'm going to leave, too. I'm going to start a company.' 

So I left the consulting company to start what was, I don't think in hindsight a terrible idea but certainly not the idea that we're here to talk about, which was a social network for real estate developers. So I tried to start this company. It went nowhere. I mean, I didn't know what I was doing. It went nowhere and then effectively one of the partners at the consulting company had jumped over to UBS, the big bank. He said, “Hey, you're a smart guy, I've got a job here for you.” So I was 25, and went to UBS to work as basically a project manager. They offered me a salary of $100,000 a year which, you know, at the age of 24, 25 growing up in Rochester, New York, that is just unheard of. So I did that, hated it. It was certainly empowering, but the work itself was working internally for UBS. It was also the same year, 2008, when Lehman Brothers collapsed which was again, an earthquake, a financial earthquake for many. The way that the bank treated long term employees really disturbed me just as a human being. 

Amy: Oh yeah, it's hard to stick around when you see people being mistreated.

Ben: Yeah. So I basically stopped working because A, the group didn't have a lot of work, and B, I was just so turned off by all this. It was one of those situations where it was a voluntary departure. Had I not volunteered, I would have been laid off for sure and I didn't care, that was another big moment for me. HODINKEE was already a thing at that point. It was already me. I was blogging everyday about watches and I just didn't care because I had something I did care about. What my parents cared about at the time was if I had health insurance.

Amy: Right, yes. Mine, too. (Laughs)

Ben: And I didn't, to be clear. (Laughter) But I just knew that I could get another shitty job at a bank if I had to. But I had this blog that I had started a few months earlier at UBS about watches that people started to really like. I started to get asked to freelance for places like GQ, the Financial Times, for real publications. Not your local college newspaper, but meaningful titles. That gave me the confidence to become a real journalist, to become a real writer and I ended up applying to journalism school. That's when I left.

Amy: So you went to Columbia for your Masters in journalism. But the difference between journalism and the guy who wanted to start a real estate social network, that seems like a leap to me. 

Ben: Yeah. (Laughs) It is, but we're all so many people.

Amy: It's true. It's true. Yeah.

Ben: Yeah, and you know, the dumbest and smartest thing somebody once said to me was that people are complex and they really are. And I'm included in that. I think I can be a hyper emotional, sentimental, thoughtful person, and I can be the guy that just wants the cool car or the cool watch. I'm the same person and that's okay. Two things can be true at once.

Amy: And I think it's very telling that you didn't try very hard actually on the real estate thing and then you started this blog about watches and now you want to go to school to become a journalist which is also not real estate development in terms of the salary potential.

Ben: It's sure not. (Laughter) It's really not, yeah. But look, it was also one of those self fulfillment things where I had always deemed myself creative and deemed myself a good writer but frankly nobody else had. Nobody else even considered me in that light. I was like A, I got to check the box for the Ivy League thing which I didn't get to do in undergraduate, it is a thing as silly as it sounds. And on top of that I got to try stuff that was just so dramatically different than the world from which I came. Being a journalist is hard. It is meaningful work and I have a lot of love for actual journalists, not the me’s, but the real journalists out there. It was an incredibly wonderful experience for me. But again I am still a writer to this day, but not in the traditional journalism sense. 

Amy: I can imagine that HODINKEE was also very satisfying to you in terms of uniting with other watch lovers, but also just being in communication and having a means, a vehicle, an architecture through which that happens. 

Ben: It was incredible. It was beyond incredible. As somebody who always felt different, it was a way to feel united and empowered and supported. For the first time in a dramatic, meaningful way, I felt like a real leader. I was this leader of this weird little movement of mechanical watches in a digital era. As stupid and trite as that sounds, I really was. And I think if you go back to 2008, 2010 era, we began to share a narrative with the world via HODINKEE that was really different than the Rob Report which I am sure you've heard of, or even GQ or the New York Times. They would often say, “Here's the new Rolex, the price is $36,000,” and that's kind of it. I would be like, 'whoa, whoa, whoa.' 

A, I can't afford it so I don't care about the price. B, why is the Rolex [** 0:39:49] will say, or the Daytona so interesting? Why is it $20,000? Why is it $10,000? And I would start to go in into these auction houses in Manhattan and I was actually doing this when I was at UBS. I would say I had a dentist appointment and I would go to an auction instead. I would read about these things and say, 'well wait a minute.' Paul Newman wore this Rolex. Why would Paul Newman, one of the most famous, handsome, successful people on earth choose this watch over that watch? 

And the story of that became frankly seminal to my success because we put the Paul Newman Daytona on the map which became the $18 million watch and really broke into the main stream. Those stories ended up creating a whole new type of consumer that was younger, that was more context driven that commerce driven. It was more like, 'hey, why this Rolex?' You ended up at the same place. You know, you get the guys that I probably used to work with in finance saying, “I want the Rolex because it might tell the chick at the bar that I am rich,” or whatever, or, “because my dad had one.” 

And then you get the HODINKEE guys who are just like, 'you end up at the Rolex because they created the waterproof watch or they created the first self winding,' which they did. They created and invented things. They did things that they didn't have to do, and I think that's really beautiful. So you end up in the same place but you get there for really different reasons.

Amy: Yeah, you know I'm just trying to relate back to my life and the thing I keep thinking of is record collecting. Because so much of it is about the context that you have dug into what you appreciate and value about that record, that artist, and how and why they created it, the story that goes into it. A lot of times you want to keep it, even if it's not your favorite record you want to keep it because it's a point of reference. It's more contextual information against which everything else is weighed. Yeah, I can see that you end up at the same place, but at this point it's not that the desire to prove your status got you there. It was the desire to understand and choose which route is meaningful to you to get you there.

Ben: Yeah. You know, that's exactly it. I think Ralph Lauren who is kind of another hero of mine and any young white man that deems himself stylish has to admire Ralph Lauren. Famously he came from the Bronx as you may know, with very little money. His taste he said, was basically harnessed and gulped because he couldn't afford all the ties. He could afford one tie so he wanted to make the best tie. 

Now he makes lots of ties obviously, but it was very much the same thinking that allowed me to really create my own version of taste. I couldn't afford a single watch. I had the one that my grandfather gave me, but I wanted to know what watches were the most interesting. I couldn't compete with the rich banker guys who had the whatever, $100,000 watch, but I could have the most interesting watch. I couldn't have the most expensive, but I could have the most interesting.

Amy: Okay, so there's many people in my life who I would call crate diggers. It's an amazing skill, they know what they're looking for, they can rifle through all of the stuff and zero in. As you're creating this business and this means of communication and you're not necessarily buying the watches for yourself, is it about the deep dive? Is it about the obsession with, the aspirational quality...

Ben: Yeah.

Amy: Describe to me the flavor of your obsession here. 

Ben: I'll be very honest, and until really through Columbia, so four years of HODINKEE which is a pretty long time, it was completely self centered. It was really like, 'hey, what do I find interesting, what do I want to write about, and that's what I'm going to do.' Once we started getting advertising then there's informative inputs here and there. But the formative years of HODINKEE were driven by my interest and what I found interesting, and the stories that I thought would be the most shared and the most compelling to other people. 

I think going back to the very first part of the conversation, what really made HODINKEE and me so different was that what I now call 'middle class mindset'.. Even though we were like, and it sounds silly now and it is silly, but even though we were online writing about watches, it wasn't about the money. It really wasn't. The idea of luxury to me, I kind of bristle at. It was about the stories. It was about the craftsmanship. The way even Rolex is made, is incredible. If you could see the way these things are made it would blow your mind. 

There is not a single person that could go to any great Swiss manufacturer and see how any high end watch is made and not at least be impressed. Say, 'You know what? Okay, I understand why it's 5000, I get it now.' That's not say you're going to buy it but you would at least get it. And that was what was most compelling. I was just doing what I wanted to do and with that came photography. A, I designed the website, the logo, the name, everything. I took all the photos myself. I edited all the photos myself. I self published. 

And at the time I met a guy named Gene Stone who is a very well-known author. He has got a few large titles to his name but he is actually 10 years ago was the ghostwriter. He wrote the autobiographies for some of the most well know people in the world. I was in Columbia and we started chatting and I produced the story that I filmed myself, I edited myself, I photographed myself, and I published myself. I just remember talking to him and he's like, “This is fucking crazy. You do all this stuff yourself?” And I was like, “Yeah, why not?” And he said, “When I write a book there's me, there's the subject, there's four editors, there's the publisher. You're doing all the stuff yourself.” And I said, “Yeah,” I didn't think anything of it. 

It was in that odd period of... so I said working in finance was kind of the dream for many people. The other dream in New York was working for Condé Nast or Hurst. They were the end game. Anna Wintour was queen and Bob Sauerbeg who was the CEO of Condé Nast was the most powerful man in New York. They took town cars everywhere and they ate at the Lambs Club, and it was this very chic, expense account drive environment. But it was at the time when those facades started to crack a little bit and people started to see that media is kind of hard. People spending money on ads that don't actually drive any conversion, that's just not going to last forever. So media started to change and that's when we started to go into commerce and we went into commerce very early. 

Amy: Yeah, when did you go into commerce?

Ben: 2012. We started making straps, like leather watch straps in Italy in 2012. We put them online. We were one of the first 2000 Shopify accounts which is pretty early. Shopify now is worth billions of dollars. Which we had invested then (laughs) but we started selling things online. The HODINKEE Shop, shop.hodinkee.com. We did a collection of straps and we sold out immediately. It was on the front page of every men's magazine, GQ, Esquire, whatever. It was that day that I got an email from a guy named John Mayer, the singer.

Amy: Oh, just him.

Ben: Yeah, just him. And he said, “Hey, John Mayer here, big fan. Would love to catch up.” I thought it was a joke obviously. He and I hopped on the phone. It was in fact John Mayer and we became fast friends. He was into watches before I was. He certainly had a lot more money than I did and still does. But he was just fascinated by this idea of a young guy in this space, and also I had nothing to sell him. And I think that as a young guy in Hollywood with some money, I think he was the target of a lot of guys trying to take advantage of that and I had nothing to sell him. So we became real friends really fast.

Amy: And you're just fellow watch nerds. 

Ben: Yeah, that's exactly it. 

Amy: Okay, so you became fast friends and then that has led to both media collaborations and actual watch design collaborations.

Ben: Yeah. He started writing for us for free in 2013. We started doing videos together just for fun in 2013 or so. We still work together. We did a collaboration as recently as a few weeks ago with my G-Shock. He's an incredibly thoughtful, design-centric guy. But his decision to back me as a person, was another one of those moments where it's like, 'this guy doesn't need to do this at all, in fact quite the opposite, and he's choosing to.' 

That was one moment that really again allowed me to have more confidence in myself. There was another in that somebody decided to make an offer to buy HODINKEE. It was a three person company and they said, “We want to own this thing.” I said, “Holy shit, why?” And that was a big deal. Then shortly thereafter I gave a talk at the Apple Store in Soho and a young man came up to me and he said, “Hey, I just want to let you know I love HODINKEE, I found out about it from Steve Jobs.” (Laughs) I was just like, 'oh okay.'

Amy: What? (Laughs)

Ben: Yeah, exactly. I was like, “What do you even mean by that?” He was a guy a little bit younger than me, he had at one point fairly advanced cancer and his Make-A-Wish was to meet Steve Jobs. So Steve Jobs agreed and went to his hospital bed and they became friends, and one day Steve Jobs said, “Hey, check out this blog. It's called HODINKEE, I think it's pretty cool.” That was obviously a mind blowing experience and then that led to the relationship with Apple which is still a good one.

Amy: Wow, okay. I can hear how the business is evolving. I can hear that it was... like you had your ear to the ground and you were not in any way under any illusions. When you got into e commerce in 2012 that was a pretty important move. 

Ben: Yep.

Amy: Since then you chose not to sell when you got the offer. Was that doubling down on yourself? Kind of believing in what you had?

Ben: Exactly that. And I had become friends with actually a contemporary of Steve Jobs Tony Fadell who was part of the founding team of the iPod and iPhone. He then sold Nest to Google for whatever, some billion dollar number. I host this video series called Talking Watches where it's like 'insert famous person,' and Tony did one early on. He was obviously dramatically more successful but we became friends and he was frankly my mentor during all of this. He said, “Do not sell this business.” 

To be clear, the dollar amount was insane. It was seven figures which again from Rochester, New York, unheard of. But he said, 'don't do this, this business is special, trust me on that, let me help you raise money.' So instead of selling it, we doubled down on myself and raised capital. Tony invested, John Mayer invested, some other very smart people invested as well, and we went out to build a real business. So we went from being a three or four person company to about a 13 person company basically overnight, and then a 20 person company and so on and so forth. Then in 2017 we became the first authorized dealer of watches on the internet. Period. In any language, in any market. That was kind of another really big turning point for us.

Amy: Yeah. Yeah, that's amazing. Congratulations to you on breaking that ground. Yeah (laughs) when you start as a blogger and you end up kind of changing the landscape, that's worth calling out. 

Ben: Yeah, I very much appreciate that because not often does that get called out. But I think along the way we changed how people look at watches for sure, we made it much more accessible, a much more fun dynamic, etc. But I think the thing and maybe bringing it back to this podcast in particular, is we started to make our own things and that was in many ways the most satisfying for me. Because selling other people's shit is cool because it's a great business and we can do it in a totally new way. The innovation behind that is material and I was really proud of that. But when you do something that is yours and it in most cases it didn't have my name on it, but it had the HODINKEE name on it, was pretty nutty. 

So we started designing watches in 2016 or so, this was after the straps and accessories, with great brands. Some brands you would know, some you wouldn't, but we've since ended up working with Hermes twice, we've worked with Leica twice, we've worked with a company called Vacheron Constantin which is one of the most prestigious brands in the world, Omega which is the second biggest brand in the world behind Rolex. I would say frankly iconic products that exist with their name on it, their watches that say Hermes, and HODINKEE on them. There's a color called HODINKEE Blue in the Hermes archive. 

So working on those things has been incredibly satisfying and if my office were set up and I apologize that it's not, you would be able to see because they were in my old office. We have the design documents of all the iterations of the first Hermes watch. And we worked with Swatch which is a hugely important company in our category. We never did a collaboration with Apple, but I was involved with the creation of the Apple Watch with Jony Ive who remains a friend. It's pretty amazing. Those are things that are probably, not probably, they are the most exciting to me because I'm a tactile person. 

So to make beautiful things with people and companies that you admire so much, it doesn't get any better than that as far as I'm concerned. 

Amy: We're talking about watches as objects but they are really stand ins for time and how we mark time, value time, allot time. Underneath it all I really just want to understand what your relationship to time is. 

Ben: The watch for me is an exceptional object. I'll use the watch that I'm wearing which is actually the watch I was kind of making fun of my grandfather for wearing. (Laughs) This is a Day-Date, this one is in platinum instead of gold. It is a very old man watch. It's not cool at all, but this one is a riff on the watch my grandfather wore. This watch was given to me by my wife for my 40th birthday. It's engraved on the back with her handwriting. On a random Tuesday in my office, this is what I choose to put on because it's got my wife's handwriting on the back. 

So this is the type of thing where now I've got two very young children, I think about the objects and some of them I contributed to, some of them I did not, that I want to be the talismans for the relationship that I have with my own life. This watch in particular is extremely understated. If you saw it, you would think it's nothing. And it is nothing. But it's platinum, it's a Rolex, it has real meaning to me. Rolex is kind of the king of the watch world so to speak, and I choose this watch more times than not because of what it means to me and what it means to my family and what I hope it means to my future children. 

My relationship with time has changed a lot. I went from being remarkably self centered, recently even, and really driven on validating myself to the world. Even when I do podcasts such as this, or even when I basically do anything in the grid or world, I'm always like, 'oh man, I'm just this watch nerd, they don't take me seriously.' I should say I used to feel that way and then more recently as things have continued to go well I wouldn't say I stopped caring, but I view myself differently. I don't consider myself a watch expert, which I am. I know more about watches than just about anybody I know, but I view myself as more of an entrepreneur and a creative and as an independent thinker than I ever did before. 

I think the things that were the most challenging for me were those years where we had celebrities writing for us and Google Venture is an investment which is Google's investment arm which is pretty prestigious. We had all these things but I always felt like I had to re-validate myself every two weeks, or every two months or whatever. Now I don't feel that anymore, so my time now is dedicated mostly to my family. Certainly to HODINKEE and I've got another start up in the digital golf space. But my time now is dedicated to self fulfillment and ensuring that my family is in the best position possible. 

Amy: Thank you for sharing all of that. I think a lot of listeners, everybody can relate to this sort of period in our lives where we're driven by validating ourselves. When you re-prioritize because of family or wisdom or whatever, it almost can be liberating. 

Ben: And how. (Laughs) To say the least, yeah. (Laughs)

Amy: So liberating. Understanding that about you and your relationship to time, how does that play into your overall creative process now that you are actually a watch designer as well as a designer or your own business and of your own life? 

Ben: I have the great luck and the great benefit of being the emotional leader of a company that has good repeal. I am not the actual leader. I am not the CEO. I stepped down over three years ago willingly. More than willingly. That was the best thing that I ever did. I had accomplished what I needed to accomplish to feel good about myself as a leader. I accomplished what I needed to accomplish in terms of having money in the bank to ensure security for my future family and myself. And I said, 'you know what, now I want to do the things that fulfill me,' and that's where I am now. 

I continue to support HODINKEE and continue to support many things as any good founder or employee should, but my primary goal now is ensuring my family and my next 40 years, I am 41, are fulfilling for me. I actually said this, I was having dinner with somebody that I know but not super well over the weekend in Colorado, and she basically asked, “Now that you're not the CEO of HODINKEE anymore, what are you looking to accomplish?” I said, “Realistically I'm good.” If I retired tomorrow I could look anybody in the eye, including someone famous, entrepreneur, billionaire guy, and feel really good about the contributions I've made. I would feel really good about all the work that I've done. 

I've done it earnestly and I've worked really hard. I've built businesses and I've helped people along the way. That's not to say I want to stop, but I could stop. So now my priorities have changed dramatically which is I think normal and healthy because as I said, up until very recently, up until I got together with my wife, Cara, my priorities were totally out of whack. It was all about me. It was all about the business. It was all about HODINKEE. It was all about continuing to grow and make money and buy watches and stupid shit. And now it's not. 

I still do that; I love doing that. I bought a watch this week. (Laughs) But that's not what drives me anymore. I'm in a much healthier, friendlier environment that makes me proud, that makes me feel really good about this journey. I often think that... I've done a lot of work on myself as you may or may not (laughs) kind of sense from this conversation, but I often think about had HODINKEE not worked or had I made some fatal mistake or had I not taken that swing or shot on goal as I said earlier, there's a version of me where I would be potentially really unhappy, maybe depressed. 

If I was still working in finance and I am who I am now and have some version of the belief that I have in myself, but I didn't have the great fortune to have my own office in Upstate New York, and have a company in New York City and etc, I might be pretty unhappy. I think that is a great plague of many men and women in the upper middle class world, or just generally. Again I feel very fortunate and very lucky and I'm fully sated. I feel totally satisfied with where I am in life. That's not to say I'm still not hungry and don't want to try other things, but I feel really good about where things are right now.

Amy: That's great to hear. I think that's also, guessing, but I am thinking as a father that's probably a pretty good place to be, especially since your kids are also probably going to figure out their own interpretation of the rules and how to do the dance, lead the dance on the dance floor. (Laughs)

Ben: Yes, that's exactly right. 

Amy: You made it sound pretty rosy and at the same time I know in any sort of life that's not a full spectrum picture. There are always growth edges and fears that must be confronted. As someone who has done a lot of work on yourself, I can only imagine you're still doing that work. What does it look like at this particular time? 

Ben: There are so many things that I could share. Some of them you would be shocked at. I don't look like John Mayer who is 6ft 5 and very handsome and can slam a guitar and gets to play with the Rolling Stones. He's very clearly an outlier. I don't look like Michael Jordan; I don't look like Steve Jobs. So in many ways I think my relatability and my generic white guy dorkiness works for me and against me. It works for me in that I'm extremely relatable, people can understand that 'hey we want this guy to win because he's just like us.' I didn't have a silver spoon. I'm not a trust fund kid. I assure you of that. And I think that story really resonates profoundly with a lot of people. 

But I think sometimes you get people that are generally unhappy with their own situation and say, 'well fuck this guy, why does he get to be the guy that designs on G-Shock, or why does he get to be the guy that's on camera with whoever, Adam Levine or Aziz Ansari or something.' So there has been a lot of hate, really vitriolic hate towards me from the community. If you get into any community, and I'm talking small niche community, whether it's design, records, I'm sure this exists, I'm sure of it, any collectible, there are these guys that become kind of the pied piper of that world and for better or worse, I am one of the pied pipers of watches. 

If you like my aesthetic and if you like what I contribute, then great. If you don't, then they have real issues with me and people have come after me personally about whatever, insert. Whether it can be my looks, my weight, my intelligence, my sensibilities, you name it. It's shocking to me that people would go that far over I literally just talk about watches. I'm not running for president here, at least yet. You know, I think it again says more about them than it does me. 

Amy: Sure. 

Ben: But that is a really trying, really difficult thing. As I said earlier, I was painfully shy. I am a true introvert even though I've been very chatty in this conversation. I'm a true introvert. I don't want the attention at all. I love the acclaim just like anybody would, but I don't want the attention. So when people that have never met me come after me with vitriol, just imagine how weird and unsettling that would be for me, and it is to this day. Less so because I'm used to it now, but in the early days of Instagram where people would just make meme posts about me, it was really just toxic, toxic stuff. So I actually removed myself from Instagram for over three years.

Amy: Yeah, I was going to ask you about that. That sounds like a healthy detox hopefully. 

Ben: It sure was. There was a lot of stuff going on in my life behind the scenes that also kind of necessitated just more mental clarity and emotional clarity. 2018 to 2021, three full years I wasn't on it at all. Didn't look at it. Didn't have a Finsta or anything like that. Then came back when I felt good enough that I could handle it. Now people can say whatever they want about me and I just don't care. 

Amy: Well congratulations on that. 

Ben: Thank you. 

Amy: That's actually a huge place to get to.

Ben: Thanks.

Amy: It's a bit deal. All right, I have loved hearing your story. I think you have been enormously creative in the way that you have navigated your life and your business, and your relationship with objects and time and luxury. I do want to just really acknowledge that at some point you said the watches were a talisman of your life and that you anticipate those being transferred down to your children and your grandchildren.

Ben: Absolutely, yeah.

Amy: That connection, that emotional connection that we have with objects, is at the heart of these important pieces that we celebrate and hold precious in our life, that then continues to speak for us after we're gone. They hold our memories, they're vessels of meaning. It's one of the reasons why design is so important as a process, as a field, as an industry, as a way of understanding the objects that we hold dear. So in many ways HODINKEE and what you stand for is representative of that. 

Ben: Yeah, you're totally right. You couldn't be more right, frankly. It's about permanence. As I mentioned earlier, I'm in a new office. This is basically my first or second day so nothing is set up.. The one thing that is by my desk is this, which is the picture of, this is from Entrepreneur Magazine, a picture of the watch that my grandfather gave me. I don't even have a picture of him here. (Laughs) I have a picture of this, you know. At a certain point a guy named Elliot Friedman bought this watch in the 90s and now it's here next to me. He's been gone for, as I said, 15 years. But the one thing that is sitting next to my desk as I unpack is that, and it will always be there. I think that is just incredibly, so permanent. 

The watch itself which is at home, my daughter who is two, my son who is 10 months, they will get that someday. They will have never met this man but this man is always there. That, again the reason that I'm wearing the watch that my wife gave me today, is because I want to feel the connection to them more than anything else. I'm not at home, I'm at my office, I want a piece of them with me all the time. And yeah, watches do that in an amazing way. This watch will be around less it explodes or something like that, or it catches on fire, forever. I own watches from the 1700s and the person who made that thing is long gone, the person that bought that thing is long gone, but the watch is still there and that's the really beautiful thing about them. 

Amy: Well that is really beautiful about you. So thank you so much for sharing your story. This has been so delightful for me. And, thanks for being you. And fuck those bullies. Fuck all of them. 

Ben: That's what I'm saying. (Laughs) No, this was truly a treat. This was a great, you're a great interviewer. Really, this is one of the best I've ever done, so thank you so much. 

Amy: Hey, thanks so much for listening for a transcript of this episode, and more about Ben including links, and images of their work - head to our website - cleverpodcast.com. While you’re there, check out our Resources page for books, info, and special offers from our guests, partners, and sponsors. And sign-up for our monthly substack. If you like Clever, there are a number of ways you can support us: - share Clever with your friends, leave us a 5 star rating, or a kind review, support our sponsors, and hit the follow or subscribe button in your podcast app so that our new episodes will turn up in your feed. We love to hear from you on LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter X - you can find us @cleverpodcast and you can find me @amydevers. Clever is hosted & produced by me, Amy Devers, with editing by Mark Zurawinski, production assistance from Ilana Nevins and Anouchka Stephan and music by El Ten Eleven.  Clever is a proud member of the Surround podcast network. Visit surroundpodcasts.com to discover more of the Architecture and Design industry’s premier shows.

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Ben and his grandfather

Ben with John Mayer (right)

Hermès Slim D'Hermès For HODINKEE

Watches, A Guide by HODINKEE

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Clever is produced and hosted by Amy Devers with editing by Mark Zurawinski, production assistance from Ilana Nevins and Anouchka Stephan, and music by El Ten Eleven.

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