Building Places That Connect People, with Bob Campana, Entrepreneur, Founder Redwood Café, Author "Don’t Look Down!"
Your World of Creativity
Mark Stinson
5.0 • 45 Ratings
🗓️ 23 February 2026
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today, we’re welcoming Bob Campana, a California-based serial entrepreneur with more than 40 years of experience building businesses across hospitality, travel, real estate, and aviation.
From hot tub manufacturing to founding the beloved Redwood Café in Modesto, to leading Redwood Café Tours across Europe, Asia, and Oceania, Bob’s career is a living case study in adaptability, optimism, and grit.
He’s also the author of the book Don’t Look Down! The Improbable Adventures and Battle-Tested Lessons of a Serial Entrepreneur, where he shares candid lessons learned from a lifetime of figuring it out as he went. Bob has his own entrepreneurship podcast, continuing his mission to share what really happens behind the scenes of business building.
1. A Lifetime of Reinvention
Bob, you’ve built businesses in very different industries—from manufacturing to hospitality to aviation. Looking back over 40 years, what allowed you to keep reinventing yourself rather than getting stuck in one version of success?
2. Risk, Fear, and the Title “Don’t Look Down!”
Your book title says a lot. Don’t Look Down! suggests both courage and consequence. How have you learned to take risks without being reckless—and what’s one moment when looking down might have stopped you if you’d let it?
3. Building Places That Connect People
Redwood Café became more than a restaurant—it became a community hub, and now it’s evolved into Redwood Café Tours around the world. What do you think makes an experience or a business truly memorable to people? (Bob recommends two books. “Moments of Truth: How the SAS President and CEO Adapted to the New Customer-Driven Economy” by Jan Carlzon. “Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business” by Danny Meyer.)
4. Lessons Earned the Hard Way
Your book promises “battle-tested lessons,” not theory. What are one or two hard-earned truths about entrepreneurship that you wish more people understood before they start their first venture?
5. What’s Next—and Why Keep Going?
You’re still expanding into real estate and aircraft leasing, writing books, and launching a podcast. What keeps you energized at this stage—and what advice would you give to entrepreneurs who wonder if it’s too late to start something new?
Bob, if you could leave our listeners with one mindset or principle that’s helped you navigate uncertainty over four decades, what would it be?
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Unlocking your world of creativity with best-selling author and brand innovator Mark Stinson. |
| 0:08.0 | This episode is brought to you by White Cloud Coffee Loasters, where every bean tells a story of adventure. |
| 0:15.0 | Visit whitecloudcoffee.com and use the code creativity. |
| 0:20.0 | Welcome back to our podcast, your world of creativity. |
| 0:25.0 | And we travel around the world talking to creative practitioners of all kinds. |
| 0:29.4 | And today we're going to talk about entrepreneurship and more than that, the adaptability, |
| 0:35.6 | the optimism, the grit, the lessons learned, everything that |
| 0:39.0 | goes into being an entrepreneur. I'm so glad to have us my guest, Bob Campana. Bob, welcome to the show. |
| 0:46.3 | Oh, thank you so much for having me. I'm just so grateful. Bob is a 40-year entrepreneur, hospitality, |
| 0:53.1 | travel, real estate, even aviation. We'll talk about all that |
| 0:56.7 | good stuff. And he's the author of a great book, Don't Look Down. I got to start with the title. |
| 1:03.2 | Bob, don't look down. What inspired that title? When I decided to write the book, it was basically |
| 1:10.6 | a memoir for my grandchildren. |
| 1:12.6 | So I was going to dig into it because as you age, you start reflecting on, |
| 1:18.2 | are they going to even remember who I am when I'm long gone? |
| 1:21.4 | And like your window of being on the planet is getting shorter and shorter. |
| 1:25.4 | It's 72. |
| 1:26.0 | Who knows when it's going to happen? |
| 1:27.3 | So I start writing this book. |
| 1:29.7 | You talked about briefly on aviation, and I've been a helicopter pilot for about 20 years, |
| 1:36.9 | fly fixed-ween aircraft as well. |
| 1:39.7 | And it's a metaphor to where look up, look at what the future has hold for you. Don't look down |
... |
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