you've been successful against the odds in both professional sports and business talk to me about the mindset required to do that careers are built on longevity and that really comes down to a mindset I wanted to show the world that I could do something my childhood was marked by not quite succeeding at anything you can learn from winning but a lot of the most important lessons and the stories I tell and what I reflect on in my life has
come from all the losses or the setbacks it taught me that everything is earned not owed it was this identity crisis of how do you rein yourself how do you build a new network around something you don't even know is that when you started the business the business was the way out the way it was framed in that way was like oh this is the sport of business this is a new thing that I can go and try to compete [Music]
in you've been successful against the odds in both professional sports and business talk to me about the mindset required to do that I mean the mindset really comes down to like a personal mission I mean if you think about doing both of those things whether it's sport or anything hard having some intrinsic reason or some motivation or some personal drive to accomplish something really pushes you forward and pulls you
into that goal a lot of people talk about building a resilient mindset or building a stronger mindset and I really think that sure maybe there's some benefit to trying to teach that or learn it but I really think it's something
that you can really only learn by going through it and you go through those tough times and push through those things when it's because you care about something so that personal mission so when it was with sport it was this goal
to become a Competitive Cyclist professional cyclists and reach different goals that I had so whether it was coming back from injury or coming back from setbacks the goal was so much larger than the pain I was dealing with or the stress and the idea of kind of not pushing forward forward wasn't even there you know whereas I look at other parts of my life and sometimes you don't push as hard because there's no personal
mission there there's no reason to push it's not necessarily something you you you take that mindset into everything you do but it's really helpful in those larger goals and similar with business you know it's just I ultimately think success in any large goal comes down to your ability to endure over the long term perseverance resilience I think extending the time Horizon people always talk about you know hacks and quick wins and how can
you shorten the timeline and ultimately I think that leads to maybe a quick win here and there but not longevity and in business and in sport the careers are built on longevity and uh and that really comes down to a mindset because along that path on anything worth doing there's just so many ups and downs and sideways and with Sport and business and there's just so much going on where does that drive come from are we born with
drive or is it something we develop by following our passion for me my drive started kind of in childhood going into adolescent early teens and it was really you know my personal Journey was I wanted to show the world that I could do something my childhood was kind of marked by not quite succeeding at anything um that I set my mind to I was an overweight child and I loved sport but I never was able to find what I was good at so I
would try out for all the all of the school sports your basketball team your volleyball team and uh I wouldn't just not make it I was always the first person not to make it so I was always on the cusp and that almost made it a
little bit worse cuz I could like taste what it would be like to be there and so that started over time to build this drive of like you know when I find something I'm good at I'm going to go all in and I want to win because when I
looked around me the feeling I felt at that time was you know I'm not succeeding in these areas and everyone that is seems to be getting some level of acceptance and you know for me as kind of a child and growing up as like maybe that's that's love that's you know what I should strive for um and I just wasn't able to do that and and so like that started to build and build and so when I found early on it was cycling I
was like oh I'm pretty good at this and I was like I'm going to I'm going to go all in and the drive was really I think when I reflect back it was a drive to be accepted to feel like oh I finally am in the Club I finally am good at something uh and then I didn't want to be good at it I wanted to be great I think that has some destructive kind of Tendencies to it as well but um that's ultimately where it came from is this feeling of
acceptance and you know a chip on my shoulder of not being able to pull it off for so long and seeing my peers do it and assuming that's what it felt like to be part of the club or accepted the one thing that stood out there for me actually two things stood out was the ability to consistently fail and keep going at such a young age where you're the first person not pecked over and over and over again but you didn't give
up whereas I think a lot of people would give up that relates I think to the acceptance like you're you're striving for did you have a brother who got attention or something where for a different reason and you're like striving to sort of like get noticed yeah totally I mean so yeah I had a younger brother and he was almost in our childhood the exact opposite he was incredibly good at sports it came natural and you know so we're a big
hockey family you know we grew up in a very traditional family you know very traditional around school like go to school go to university very traditional around team sports hockey um and hockey was the big one and my my brother was really good at it you know Triple A and came natural and you know I wasn't as good you know I was barely could make like the select team and so seeing that is like oh my parents really like value
Sport and in particular hockey and my brother's really good at it and I see him succeeding and I'm not succeeding at it and my parents are great and of course they love me but I was like I want to be good I want to make them proud with something right like cuz I'm not particularly great at school I didn't enjoy it you know I just I I never really understood it wasn't articulated me in school what the purpose was and I was like you're
learning this because this it wasn't made kind of real for me um so I didn't enjoy that too much and then I did enjoy sport like but hockey just wasn't the thing for me and so the ability to fail over and over again I think you make a choice every time you fail whether that's going to hold you back or push you forward and ultimately I decided early on to let that push me forward and I've carried that through because that's
where you learn your most important lessons you can learn from winning but a lot of the most important lessons and the stories I tell and what I reflect on in my life has come from all the losses or the the setbacks and and that's
really overtime built such a base of lessons and insights to just kind of propel me forward that you know I'm thankful for all those failers they're incredibly difficult at the time and when you're going through them you wish
they would go away and I've always found one year 3 years 5 years in the future you become more and more thankful for those opportunities last night you told me that competitive Sports is better than business school talk to me about that as a training ground for business yeah yeah I think for life as well honestly I think you know what does Sport teach you ultimately sport will teach you that you have to put in the
work if we use running as an example you can't just show up and run a marathon right you can get to the start line anyone can go to the start line but it's going to be pretty clear who prepared and who didn't but beyond that competitive sport at least in my uh experience you know I was Competitive Cyclist I was five times on the national team for about 10 years traveled around the world racing my bike and what that
taught me was a bunch of things most importantly failure and resilience like like how do you ever like we would race maybe let's say 10 times a year and maybe win once or twice so you're failing more than you succeed is how are you dealing with that and Building forward and how are you dealing with injuries but more than that it's how are you networking yourself so I managed myself as well so I was negotiating my sponsorship contracts I
was booking Worldwide Logistics you know I remember when I was 16 uh in high school I was named to the my first national team and I got an email so I had just won a national race and that named me the team that year I didn't even know what world championships was I was so green in the sport so new to the sport and I got an email from the national Federation it's like hey you've been named to the the World
Championships team it's in Italy next month like we'd love for you to come and I remember emailing back and being like no I can't I have school and because I had no idea I was so green and then I I showed the email to my parents they're like what did you do like email them back like you're going to go we'll talk to the school we'll get you out and like we'll support you to go um and so I emailed them back I got on the team and
what that led into is like it was going to Italy so hop on a plane arrive in Germany for a layover having no idea where I am and just being kind of thrown into the deep end like that like as a young kid just hop on a plane you end up in Europe I didn't even really know where Europe is at that time embarrassingly if you said point out Italy on a map I would have had a tough time and so that's like how kind of I
just but now I'm there and how do you deal with that and how do you meet new people and then how do you perform all of these lessons and we talked about earlier about building a resilient mindset and how do you learn to kind of
just push forward when things get tough and Sport will teach you that and you know business school I think is important I don't want to knock on it too bad but they're teaching you you know all the things you can read about
and learn about right so all the the the tactics and and kind of just the the common knowledge and how you would apply that but I think ultimately in business at least what I've learned is like you could know everything but it's how are you going to react when hits the fan right um and how are you going to talk to people and negotiate and use your network and and kind of think creatively and those were a lot of the
lessons that I learned in sport is like how do you use some of your past experiences to your advantage like having the network I did was so incredible and I just think that sport if I if I boow it all down to like a succinct answer it's really that it taught me that everything is earned not owed you had to do the work there was no substitute for the work that things almost never go to plan and you need to figure it out uh and then it just built
so many skills of Performing Under Pressure you know talking to people it's just it just you're immersed in it and there's no getting out of it and I just thought that was such a formative experience you know everything we'll talk about today and everything I've done in business has been on the like on the back of the sporting career you know I didn't go to business school of course I've read all the books and I've tried
to learn the common knowledge and I have but the lessons and the the the actual mindset I take to business for almost the last 10 years is the same mindset I had when I was competing in sport talk to me a little more about the role of sort of preparation or positioning when it comes to Sport and business seems like there's a lot of similarities between the two in that yeah in sport I was never the most talented Rider um and
honestly sport was a manifestation of my entrepreneurial Tendencies because I like I said I grew up in a sport family I think when I look back if I had been introduced to business at that time I would have gone into business and done something more entrepreneurial but I didn't have an entrepreneur model growing up I didn't really even know that was a thing it was like I said traditional family normal jobs and Sport
and so I was like okay I have all these kind of Tendencies of you know wanting to go after a big goal willing to take risk resilient pointed at a sport you can be pretty successful my superpower in that I used with those
entrepreneurial tendencies in sport was preparation and positioning how can I be more prepared than any other athlete when it comes to the start line how can I study the course how can I take what I know that's coming up on the season
before replicate that at home and practice and study it knowing that I had disadvantages you know so I raced downhill mountain bike but I grew up in Pickering Ontario there's not a mountain in Pickering Ontario so how do you
compete with people that live around the world around mountains or the what I call the BC kids the people lived in BC with all the mountains in British Columbia and you have to really figure out how to make that work and how I made
that work is I would build little 10 or 15 second um parts of the course on the hillside by my house and what that taught me was I really learned precision and the importance of really executing at a high level and executing when it mattered positioning myself and being prepared for when the race run came to be the most ready I could be that started way before the actual event started that was studying the course in
advance the start of preparation the training all the offseason and just knowing ultimately when you get to the start line whether it's in sport or business that you've done everything you could do to prepare for that and that
usually worked for me because the pressure in those situations no matter what you know or how much you've done if you're not prepared to position properly the pressure will overtake all the talent that you have for sure like the
ability to execute is so important one of the other similarities I think is from the outside looking in sports looks really sexy business looks really sexy but from the inside it's a bit of a mess it's a total mess in both really in sport being a professional athlete or competitive athlete is glamorized it's you're seeing the the very tip of the iceberg you're seeing the 1% of the time that it goes right and you're standing
on the podium and you're seeing these people succeed but you're not seeing the early mornings you're not seeing the injuries you're not seeing the setbacks the mental health that comes along with it and similarly with business you see the headlines but you don't see what led into that the athletic careers and the business successes that we all read about these are often these 10year overnight successes right and people
glamorize that and latch on to that and be like you know that's what business is or that's what sport is and I think that's somewhat destructive because it really misses the true nature of these Endeavors which is resilience and tough times and and a long time to get there as well and we kind of get into this world with where people want to hack or they want a shortcut and I just think it's it's the wrong messaging and it's
the wrong way to approach these things it's just so important to extend the timeline on these things and and and really just give it you all is it true you taped your broken wrist to a bike to compete yeah I mean so the way our sport worked is you train all winter and you basically compete in the summer and so you spend so much time preparing for a race that you have 3 months of racing and you would constantly get injured and
you would just have to figure out how to make that work and yeah leading into one of the biggest races of the year I had a broken wrist uh a broken finger there's no long-term damage to just dealing with the pain I can get this dealt with when the season's over in my mind it was like I've worked too hard to just back away from this challenge it's like so I asked myself what is it going to take to get this done you know I couldn't hold on to
The Handlebar I didn't have the strength and so I was like I'm going to have to tape cuz everything's led to this moment I'm I'm not going to back down like if I physically can do it if I'm awake I'll I'll be there and I think it's those lessons and ultimately we talked about earlier about resilience and that mindset of doing hard things and I talked about you just have to do them that taught me you can do it you know
like the pain I was feeling was so crazy but ultimately you get up there and you're prepared and you know when you're ready to execute the pain goes away I think it's really important to go through those tough times and realize that you can come out the other side cuz that's ultimately where you start over time to build that muscle and be able to deal with the really high stress things as they come and stay calm during them
I'd be very surprised if someone could teach them to do that without going through the tough times you went through a bit of a an identity crisis post sport talk to me about that yeah for 10 years I woke up with a very clear idea of what I wanted to do with my life and where it was going to go uh and I loved that I woke up every day with a fire in my belly saying this is the goal here's how I'm going to get it and here's what I'm
going to do and then almost seemingly overnight when I walk away from the sport that's gone right your identity is gone you know like the day before I retire it's hi I'm Rob Fraser professional cyclist the next day it's hi I'm Rob Fraser who is that right I've I've identified as this cyclist for so long my my entire identity is that my friend network is that you know my friends at this point were from all over
the world we would meet up during the season or the offseason and be in the same place it was the common language we all spoke it was it was everything the next day that's gone and over the next year that Fades away cuz you're no longer on the scene and the friends they're still friends but you don't see them and the common interest starts to fade and you know that kind of led to this dark period for me where I was like
what am I going to do with my life at this point I was in my early 20s so the rest of my life was was still ahead of me but I felt so lost you know cuz I I just I didn't really know what to do and and the idea of not having that big goal was terrifying and it really led to this period of trying to figure out what am I going to do with my life it sounds a little ridiculous sometimes but it was just kind of yeah it was this identity
crisis of how do you reinvent yourself how do you build a new network around something you don't even know and what am I good at you know like I I didn't go end up going and or finishing University you know I I hadn't worked any other career jobs I worked the odd jobs here and there but cycling was my life sure you could go into coaching or something like that but that wasn't really where my my passion was it was really about
that fulfilling some large goal and ultimately being in kind of control of my destiny and yeah so it was about a 2-year period of trying to navigate that and figure it out and and really make sense of it is that when you started the
business the business was the way out and so during that two years I tried a bunch of things I was a applying for jobs I ended up getting into the local College in Victoria where I live in Victoria BC uh for sport management I
thought the logical step here was a career in sport like I said coaching it's like here's my skill set how do I apply that moving forward what's the logical thing to do here so getting into sport management I simultaneously got a job with the Canadian Sport Institute was working with future Olympians I was on paper doing what made sense what you would see the typical post athlete do and I was dead inside I was just like
this can't be it you know I'm doing what is supposed to be right this is what everyone says is right and I was like if this is the rest of my life I'm not sure like I can do this you know and at the time I was going into my second year of school and I was just kind of you I was in a four-year program so three more years left but I was starting to get that angst of like this is going to be over soon and like real life's going to
hit I'm going to be expected to like go deeper into the career and just kind of go further down this path I'm on that I really don't want to be on and I don't know how I got onto it but I for some reason listened and listened or read to the 4our week 4our work week um by Tim Ferris and it sounds so so trite it's so it's so common I got on that book and what it really taught me I can remember exactly where I was I was walking around
a local golf course you know I listen to books more than than read them this idea listening to the book really gave me the idea that oh I think I have some skills here what he's saying makes sense I understand this I think I can do it business sounds interesting and the way it was framed in that way was like oh this is the sport of business like this is a new thing that I can go and try to like compete in and not necessarily win
but just a big goal and that was so exciting to me it was like a new A New Path and it had more longevity there was more income opportunity and that was incredibly exciting and that kind of evolved into how do I stay in sport but on the other side of the table you know if I'm not going to be in coaching or an athlete or on the kind of more common path is there a way that I can build a business or a brand in the athletic
space like how do I keep this party going was kind of the idea while also having a new Big Goal and trying to just Chase something why socks socks particularly in cycling are a large part of the culture so in cycling when you're on a team it's an individual sport we race individually but you're on a team and the team whether it's National or your Your sponsorship team you'll get a kit so you'll all look the same you look
the same as your teammates socks were this area where you could wear whatever you wanted and so I would always wear kind of funky colored socks I actually had a sock sponsorship that was a way that my parents ultimately could pick me out on the hill cuz you're watching a bunch of bikers come down the hill and I would wear really loud socks like pink and blue and you could kind of spot that and be like okay that there's Rob um
beyond that was a way to kind of like express your individuality right it's like okay you're in this sea of sameness how can I have a little bit of me out there and so socks were already in my blood and so I took that same kind of mentality out of sport into the real world so at school I would wear those socks in the gym at work and so I became known as the sock guy before owning a sock business uh and so when it became
time to like I'm going to start a business I started thinking of like what do I know and what do I like and what do I think can be improved and I ultimately wanted at the time I loved Brands like Lululemon and Red Bull those were two
like kind of top tier brands for me around their athlete marketing their product development I just I loved everything about those Brands I was like I don't really I'm not technical I didn't have like a particular set of
skills I was like apparel seems like a more an area that I could get into and understand I've got some skills I could do there and what's you know what's like the simplest form of apparel at least you know my my thinking back then was like I kind of know sock socks seem like a good place to start because relatively low risk in terms of how much I would need to invest to get get started it was the the culmination of all of those
things and I could probably tell a story right now of like why socks were this incredible business opportunity which they are but at the time I was just like socks are cool you know I think socks could be improved and it turned out as I went further down that path I uncovered how much opportunity actually existed in socks and you know ultimately the Insight was the entire world was moving towards athleisure we were coming into a
less traditional less formal way of dressing and much more into a more functional way of dressing and we can see that with our clothing the pants I'm wearing right now for example or the yoga pant and when I looked at the sock
category um they remained use case specific so they recycling socks or running socks or dress socks I was like why isn't there a yoga pant for the foot that was the idea like look at the yoga band how versatile that is you can wear
it exercise you dress It Up Down casual I was like what a functional fantastic and fashionable piece of apparel it's like why are our socks not like that and so that was the simple idea and I got kind of obsessed with it and I was like this can be improved I remember the first time I tried on a pair of your socks I had never thought about socks before I mean I was the guy who sort of went to the store and like what's the
cheapest per pair of socks that I can get put them on your feet they sort of cover up your feet and that's what they do and then I tried on a pair of yours and I forget how I got the first pair I think a friend gave it to me and then I instantly went to your website and I ordered like I threw out every sock in my drawer and I just ordered a brand new drawer of socks I had never thought about the difference between a good pair
of socks and a bad pair of socks and I still have no idea but I know your socks feel really good what the difference between a good pair and a bad pair so what you said is not uncommon if you think about socks in general they're the world's worst gift as you're a kid it's what your parents always would get you as a gift yeah if you're bad for Christmas you're someck exactly it was almost a punishment and then as an adult
you've learned to almost hate this product and buy it begrudgingly at the department store it's an afterthought no one actually thinks about their socks and so we're living in this world of 90 plus% of the population is thinking a lot about everything they wear EX except for one of the most important things really the like one of the mo like the pair of apparel that touches the ground with you right and is is is kind of
foundational to to the feeling right up standing and walking and everything you do the idea that this was an unaware category was super interesting but what makes a sock special I mean there's so many things like the common socks you'll buy they're just low quality the seams uh they're not seamless so they're going to you know create hot spots and pinching they're going to be typically probably lowquality cotton and so
they're going to absorb sweat which leads to blisters there's a ton of different things if you look at you know any good athletic so specifically ours they're going to be seamless they're going to be moisture wicking they're
going to have support so there's going to be support in the arch to help with you know midfoot fatigue there's going to be strategic cushioning so like where is the foot making contact with the ground we could go on for days but
ultimately what I was trying to solve for was like I want something that is going to be incredibly comfortable useful across a bunch of different sports or activities it was born out of a personal need right like I said I was
going to school I was working a job and I was still training and and staying active I was doing some triathlons at the time and I wanted a pair of socks that could do all of those things cuz the cycling socks I mentioned I would
wear at school they weren't great for running they would fall down the cuff wasn't compressive enough and so I was like that led to that kind of discovery of like why isn't this better and ultimately a good pair of socks should be supportive they should look good they should feel good and you should be able to do almost everything in them I mean that seems obvious but it wasn't at the time it's crazy they're almost like
compression socks too right like they feel really good around your feet and your feet just feel happy yeah that's the fine balance of like it's it's like a hug for your feet you know and and but how do you not make that too compressive and how do you make that work across a wide variety of foot sizes and we're not always perfect but that is the goal like it should hug the leg and not fall down but it also should come off the leg
without leaving marks which is a tough thing to do we are striving to always improve that but I think we've got a good mix and your story is not uncommon the people will come in and they'll buy a pair typically because a lot of our socks have fun designs on them what we recognized early on is socks are this like I mentioned with cycling socks are this way that people can express individuality uh and within that people
have different ways they like to do that whether they not they like to celebrate different animals they love or you know nature Landscapes or their favorite food so we discovered that like it's really hard digitally because we're primarily sold all online um we're also sold in store but primarily online at least for the the majority of the business how through the the computer screen or the phone screen can we convince you that
this sock feels good without putting it on your feet that's really tough an easier way is to give you an emotional response being like I love cats for example I want to buy that sock cuz it has cats on it but what we know is that's the best pair of socks you're ever going to put on and so that person buys the pair of socks cuz they like the design they put it on and then like you they come back and go oh my like I
didn't even know socks could feel like this and they replac their sock drawer with it and that's that's quite literally you know our mission is to like or a vision for the business is to replace the sock drawer I truly believe that we should be able to make a great all day performance sock that someone could line their whole drawer with based on how what height they like what kind of material they like and you shouldn't
have to make a decision in the morning anymore of what you're going to wear like that sock will do it for you did you have a business partner when you started I was in school when I started the business so was in my second year I
just had the idea you know what I said I'm going to start a business I was quite literally listen to that book laying in bed kind of you know having my nightly identity crisis some existential crisis like it just snapped me like I'm
going to start a business I kind of got up right there started open my Apple note started thinking about different brand names and went to school and I talked to my good friend at the time I developed a good a great friendship with a classmate we do all our class projects together we actually got a job together outside of work I was doing some rep work for a brand and I got him involved we're doing some field marketing and so
we got on well you we're friends we worked well together and I didn't expect the business to work I was like it was it's like what are the odds here's this like former athlete guy that's kind of like not particularly great at school has no business experience who set a goal to build a sock company everyone looked at me like I was crazy like some people still do right and so I was like this would be way more fun with a friend
which by the way is like the world's worst reason to start a business with someone it's because it's fun to do with a friend that I've learned in highight but you know ultimately what I didn't ask myself at the time which I think is so important for entrepreneurs and just people in general to ask themselves is what happens if this goes right the common knowledge is for people to hedge their downside they go what happens if
this goes wrong and that's very that's fair people want to protect themselves and these are ultimately risky Endeavors but I didn't ask myself at the time like what happens if this goes right because if you think about it and I try to always tell young entrepreneurs is like what would be more painful failing because it didn't work or failing because it did and you didn't capture the opportunity that would be so much
more painful and I felt like that kind of happened in my cycling career so you know like I'm working really hard now to not kind of repeat that mistake but yeah I started it with a business partner and it was fine when it was kind of like just something we were doing but you know ultimately as it started to get a little bit of traction like I said I didn't expect it to work but that doesn't mean that I wasn't incredibly
committed you know I was obsessed the second I decided to do it I was all in I was reading every Business book I could find I was like I said I had entrepreneurial Tendencies I just didn't know they had manifested in sport for so
long that I was like oh I found business now and I just got obsessed with it the same was not true of my business partner that wasn't kind of his thing you know he wasn't necessarily I don't think he would identify himself as an
entrepreneur and so as things started to grow and we were pretty lucky with some early success the business started to work um you know in the first year we did you know multi6 figure revenue of just selling socks kind of around town for the most part the first socks I sold I just took to school in a tupperware and hand toand combat and sold them to students teachers B said like you know we're not friends if you don't buy these
and so that was like the how it got started and so ultimately after after a year it started to get real like the work required nights and weekends as like the common stories go and you know it became pretty clear that this was out of line with his values you know we didn't have those discussions early on of like what do we want out of this cuz we were doing it for fun we were friends we just wanted to have a good time and
try try something it really kill time and and during school like we always expected us to continue with school and kind of continue on but that for me evolved very quickly into like oh no I can do this you know like I really like
this and there's a big opportunity here and so you know ultimately over time that tension started to grow and the gap between our abilities to have conversations what's going on because I was just like consuming knowledge and
trying to to learn at such a rate because I was obsessed with it it became very difficult for us to be aligned on what we wanted out of the business which ultimately led to him leaving the business and and quitting true to form we didn't have any proper resolution for that we didn't have a shareholders agreement we didn't like we just did almost everything wrong when setting up the company which which is really easy
to do because there's almost no great resources for helping an entrepreneur and and ultimately to get the proper legal agreements is expensive when you have like we started the business with $1,000 each right so put a th000 bucks in that's all we had and it all went in inventory there was no money for a legal agreement or a lawyer and you're in the honeymoon phase of business of course you're never going to fight with your
partner right everything's great it's going to be successful but when sh gets real that's when those those kind of things are super important to have at least a discussion about and there was no discussion and so he left the business there was no resolution and that kind of led into this this period of where I had to figure out how to how to resolve that and it was super messy and ultimately ended up um coming to an
arrangement and buying them out about it ended up kind of closing two two and a half years into the business and kind of March of 2019 is when uh he officially left the business and I got full control and that's kind of what I Peg is like the real star that's where I was like I'm all in cuz I had to go take out a personal loan to make it happen of like $150,000 which was insane right I remember we finally agreed on a number
and I didn't have that money I had student debt I had the exact opposite of money in the bank and but I was so committed around that we talked about earlier around just the mindset and the willingness to kind of just go all in I went to every Bank in town and would just I was like okay I've got credit cards all draw out on I've got a line of credit I've got some student loans um my then girlfriend now wife like she was
was like I'll sign on we'll get some loans and I was able to kind of put the money together through all these various very high interest high-risk kind of uh funding sources cuz I didn't want to ask anyone I was like I believe in this but I don't want to put anyone else at risk you know like I'm willing to take this on and put it on my shoulders and go and um and the act of doing that actually my now father-in-law reached out after he's
like hey look I appreciate that you were willing to do this but I'll loan you the money and I'm forever grateful for that because a was a vote of confidence and it was it just it it allowed me to kind of you know push on and I was super proud to be able to pay him back in a couple years too we paid him out like relatively quickly and the terms were super Fair anyways but it's like I I want to get his money back and I take
that responsibility incredibly seriously Christmas dinner be pretty yeah yeah of course and but I had such high conviction that like I would do anything to get that money back if the business wasn't going to fail I would that money
would go back first and you know I take those sorts of things like when people bet on me or you know my employees are whatever I take that incredibly seriously the number one thing you should be focused on is like doing right
by the people that believe in you and bet on you who is the first person that ever bet on you my mom yeah so I went to University and dropped out so that's like that was a big riff in our family cuz going to University was the safe path that was the known path of you know my dad sold insurance and you know my mom when when she had us stayed at home and it was it was super traditional super go to school get get whatever job
build a family and so theide a of kind of going all in on this cycling career at the time was just like a pipe dream for the most part and it wasn't really anything yet was a big riff but my mom like I could tell deep down she was like I know you got this I know you'll figure it out cu what I would always say to my parents at the time and I was telling you about this yesterday is like whenever I have these big goals I kind
of hold two beliefs at the same time one belief is I'm absolutely sure I'll pull this off like I have no doubt I will figure this out but I have no idea how I'm going to do it I could not articulate that which is very difficult for a parent cuz they're like I want to believe you but I need to see some pathway for what's the plan dude yeah it ended up working out and it was the same thing in business too it's like I have
no idea how I'm going to do this but I do know I can do it and it's going to work out my mom being like you know kind of just on the side you know being like I know you'll figure it out that was you know so important she's always kind of been in my corner like that and certainly the the person to kind of bet on me and and understand I was different you know she understood that like I was intensely passionate about things as a
kid and I don't think also she really had a frame for entrepreneurship like CU it just wasn't a discussion like I had all these little things going I had my own little my own little bike shop repair I built an office in my bedroom closet I was always doing these I just didn't know what it was I was obsessed with the idea of kind of building business I built bike teams I would get all the kids in there we build teams I
was organizing people we had like schedules and so I was always building teams leading teams building little businesses and I just didn't know what I was doing was entrepreneurship or building a business that was just what
came natural to me and what I loved to do so she knew I was different so she knew when I was kind of going to go on a different path and she encouraged that which was I'm like forever thankful for because you know it's it's hard to to be
the only one that believes in yourself sometimes how important are the people you surround yourself with towards happiness and accomplishing your goals I think it's it's it's everything really let's talk about like business or life in general it's like you want people around you that are rowing in the same direction right like you want people that have goals you want to be able to swap and share insights you want to be
able to encourage each other the power of having like a great Network or group around you is kind of a double-edged sword sometimes too though because although the like a great network of people are going to propel you forward and teach you things you wouldn't know sometimes you start to kind of try to keep up with the Joneses a little bit so particular like as I started to get some level of moderate success in business my
network started to grow I started to become friends with people that were much further ahead than me and it almost led to this insecurity you know like for the five years before I was building my business relatively unknown didn't really know anyone else building a business I was really operating authentically and like what I wanted to do and setting goals that I thought was achievable and then I'm immersed in this
world where people are thinking much bigger which is on one hand great you know lessons of thinking bigger and and realizing like oh I am limiting myself but at the same time trying to shorten the time Horizon to try and catch up to these people that I admire there's just no way to rush that process and every time I've tried to rush that process particularly over the last couple years it's ended up backfiring you know like
this year in particular I made a conscious effort to be like no more I'm going to go back to to operating authentically doing what I feel is right listening to the device around me but filtering it and using it to the best of
my ability and it's going so much better it's really back in that that way of operating authentically and so there is you I think you have to be careful as your network grows that you're not trying to compare yourself to those
people as much and you're GA you're just Gathering inspiration from them when you're around a lot of smart people too ideas are going to start flying and it's your you need to have the confidence and willingness to say like that's a great idea that one's not for me or how do you synthesize those ideas cuz in the early days I thought well these people all know a lot more than I do and sure they know maybe is more about business but
they don't know more about my business they don't have all the context of what's going on they don't understand the complexities of Simply introducing a new product right like that has so many supply chain implications marketing implications like sure like the the most common advice I got from people is oh you sell socks have you thought about doing underwear it's like yeah of course I've thought about doing underwear but
like those are completely different supply chain psychologies now it's gendered where socks are unisex like there's so many considerations but on the surface it's good advice and so had to really learn that you know advice is welcomed and appreciated but it's my job to synthesize it and actually use it when it makes sense so just start accumulating all of that and making sense of it and you know I've stopped applying a lot of it when it doesn't
make sense anymore and being okay with saying no which is tough when you're surrounded by smart people right you've got investors you've got mentors you've got advisors and of course they're smartly know what they're doing but I think it's really important as an entrepreneur to know you know your business best right um and the advice is there to help guide you but sometimes it's not not what you should be doing
walk me through some of the changes you made specifically this year like what's different between the mindset approach attitude processes that you you're doing this year that have led to incredible results versus what you were doing last year I'd say the number one thing we talked about was removing ego let's just not do things because we think they're the thing to do let's just do the right things we need to understand that we
can't necessarily change the market we can't create demand that's not there at our current size right now we need to be okay with the es and flows and we don't need to when things are not going well or we're in a slower period we don't need to try and artificially inflate that we don't need a hail marry you know silver bullets and like hacks and all these things they're so appealing to an entrepreneur every entrepreneur is like you're just in it
right it's so hard and when someone has this new hack or new thing it's it's that that fallacy of like oh that one thing I'm not doing is going to unlock all of my all of my or solve all of my problems unlock all of the growth and it's just not true and the worst thing that can happen is the the one time that maybe that silver bullet does work because then it it teaches you that oh there's hacks here so I always kind of
caution like if you get lucky just appreciate it but these hacks typically don't work what we ended up doing is just extending the time Horizon you know like I said I was trying to rush before to to for for what reason though to it was literally expectations I had put on myself no one around me was saying you need to grow at X or do y it was really me just feeling like I needed you know to gain acceptance of people that
already accepted me it was kind of weird and it was really just the self-discovery of being like no these people already accept me I'm I'm doing what I do I'm I'm it's kind of that kid again right of like oh if I don't keep performing and outperforming and winning maybe they won't like me anymore or I won't be accept it anymore and then just being okay with like look you know I have to just operate this authentically
and I asked myself what would it look like for this business to be around in 20 years forget about what we grow this year how do we build a business that endures over time and that makes the building so much more fun like how do we
actually get back I fell back in love with the product again this year right like I love socks you know it's such a weird thing to say but one of my superpowers is I actually really love socks and care about the product and
that comes through in the product that we we offer people love them as well because I'm obsessed with making it better and you know like I'm obsessed with the customer feedback around it and falling in love with the product serving the customer extending the time Horizon and not doing things because your ego is dictating it that's a pretty good recipe for business success the thing that gives me the most joy is you know I sit
down with our team now and we're we're talking about the future and it feels like we're on our toes and not our heels now and they're also feeling really inspired and they're saying you know even when you know like there's still challenges you know business is still super hard but we're dealing with the hard problems calmly we're like we can figure this out we've learned the tough lessons and we planned for this versus
throwing Hail Marys you know it's like we're operating from a position of just trying to play catch-up on on hitting our arbitrary goals that didn't really matter and It ultimately led to an unhappy work environment like it was just it was stressful and it just wasn't fun it's like why are we doing this like like why we we we do this because we we enjoy what we do we enjoy learning and improving um and that was that was the
big unlock is is Ely just extending the time Horizon being like what makes us happy running this business it's interesting when you think about extending the time Horizon there's so many different ways to do that right not
going into debt there's operating from a position where we can run a marathon instead of a Sprint it's not taking advantage of your customers and treating them as a win-win like you're going to be a customer for life is there anything
else that comes to mind when you think of extending the time Horizon in order to extend the time Horizon I need to be physically and mentally as healthy as I can be same with our team this doesn't work if we're not all operating to the best of our ability to and the business has been so stressful like any business over the last 10 years that it really took a toll on my body specifically over the last two years we had a few very
stressful events and I didn't deal with them I dealt with them well in business but the rest of my life kind of fell apart in my body and realizing that that's not a sustainable path to go on like being an athlete for so long and and a younger like and younger in general was like I death gripped through life you know I was just like I learned very early with the injuries we I rode through is like oh you can just just
make it through this you can just brute force your way through this and that's not the best approach always in business and especially if you have an extended time Horizon and longevity in mind right it's like the same idea of are you better off consistently working out or going once a week and just like demolishing yourself and the consistency is going to be better for sure I had kind of like three goals this year was
like get the business back to a place where we're thriving and having fun get my health back to a place where I feel confident and inspired and like kind of all in on this and then the the third one was a more personal it was just like you know I had a new kid I two two boys and one was born this year was really just like you know like really focus on the family because I had my first kid during like the real thick of business
and during CO as well and you I really wanted to kind of enjoy the process of this it was kind of like you know family business and health were three core pillars and those things holistically all need to be kind of going well for me
to operate at my best you know we talk about work life balance which is like I I I hate the concept of it in entrepreneurship you know like for for an like a a salaried worker like sure like balance should be you know
something that you're wor thinking about but in particular in sport or high performance careers or something that you're doing it's like you need to tilt the scale in your favor right and that's by definition no balance however I think what gets missed here is that part of the work for an entrepreneur like an athlete is like your health and your personal relationship if those aren't in a good spot you're not operating at 100%
efficiency and so that's part of the work right what's not part of the work is maybe partying or doing things that you shouldn't be doing um that are going to set you further back but people think about you know if I say work life balance is uh is a joke people are like oh what about your health when health is included in the work um and I think it's such an important part of it too is like how can you be a high performance
entrepreneur how can you tilt the scale in your favor how can you how change the odds and I think your ability to to be sharper more alert physically and mentally fit is is going to do so so much benefit for you especially as the business grows too the business now in its current stage is much more dependent on me thinking clearly and having good ideas and meeting people and being on when I do that um and that requires me
feeling good I like how you said tilt the odds in your favor I I've never really understood this concept of balance the balance implies that you're perfectly equal in these things and so I always think of this as like a mosaic so you have a border and you have different size pieces and some of those pieces are familyes some are work some are maybe your hobbies uh health is definitely one of the big pieces there and they they
shrink and they sort of like but they can never go away sometimes work's going to be more of a priority sometimes it's not sometimes you're going to family's going to take over so these the pieces expand but they can never really go to zero and health is like so foundational for all of these but when we get busy the first thing we do is like what do we do we skip lunch or we get a really crappy lunch we stop working out we stop
sleeping really well and we think we tell ourselves that we'll just make up for it later and we start making worse and worse decisions we're cranky we're irritable and it just compounds negatively yeah it almost ensures destruction right so I've got a protocol now because that's what happened to me two years ago when when things were going poorly that's what I let go and it just it cascaded into a two-year event
which I'm sure could have been much shorter um and I just treat it more like an athlete you know if you're injured you go into recovery protocol so if you're dealing with a high stress event in business what's your recovery protocol what's that look like how do you build that how do you build that into a system and follow it when these things happen you can't solve them overnight and so like working extra 3 hours I mean sometimes you need to stay
up late you know there were late nights because I'm literally on email chains with my lawyers for dealing with stuff but like that's not every night and that's not super common and you can you know moderate that stuff letting your health Go is is kind of the worst strategy I found honestly cuzz getting through those times is down to resilience perseverance and if you let your health go and when it did like that's when you know very rarely have I
ever felt like I couldn't do something when my health was in a poor spot about 2 years ago going through the thick of it that was one time where I was like I don't know if I can do this much longer like if I don't get better I I honestly don't know if I could do this or I would trade this business to feel better cuz I'm just so sick right now and I just don't want to do it anymore that was the only period so that's when my health
left I was like oh was that the lwuit that was the the cease and assist that led to our ultimate Rebrand yeah that was like the first walk me through that we're five years into business operating under a former name and it's going really well it's 2021 our business that previous year grew 135% year-over-year and we were already growing an average of 100% year-over-year so it was just up and to the right I was physically feeling good
I was fit I like ran a half marathon PR that year like everything was great I it's the year I think we met and I was Raising we bootstrapped the business from the start and like I said I started to build a network and it this opportunity Rose to to raise some money that not only there was kind of three parts to it you know there was uh a personal security part to it there was capitalizing the business for the first
time like actually having some some Firepower behind what we want to invest in and then also inviting in some voices that I was so desperate for of people I admired so it was kind of this opportunity I remember telling you know
a bunch of friends and and my wife being like you'll never get this like all my business Heroes like want to give me money and invest in the company like this seems almost like cheating this is this is incredible so I pounced on that
opportunity but literally the day the money hit the account we raised you know millions of dollars it hits the account I get an email from my lawyer that says urgent in the subject line and that's just almost never a good thing and it's from my IP attorney which I bar I rarely hear from from it was our first ever cease and assist and it it basically said you know there's a a company that uh believes they have rights over your
name and and is demanding that you do X Y and Z and one of those is stop using the name and so I was kind of like immediately just shook cuz we just raised all this money we've been in business for 5 years and that was the first time you know in sport and in business to that point everything was something that like I was solving problems that I created I wasn't battling somebody like I was in charge this was something
happening to us that I was completely out of control on and I had no frame for it I had never gone through it before I didn't know anyone that went through it for maybe half an hour I was like this is a death blow you know like I was kind of like let myself and then you know I called called you actually I called a few other people I was like okay like this is not uncommon um but it was incredibly stressful it basically led us onto this
six-month journey of rebranding and changing our name and that's an incredibly complex process for a business that's been around for 5 years and how do you even start that process of you know communicating the messaging what is a name that's going to work and the stress I think ultimate the stress came down to was not messing it up right I had so many people that relied on me at that point I had a young family I had
employees I had investors I had what felt like the world on my shoulders and none of them were putting that pressure on me I put it on myself because I told you I take these responsibilities incredibly seriously if someone gives me money or bets on me like I said like it's my duty to do right um and so I wasn't going to not put 110% effort into it and I had to learn so I basically over like over the next six months became quite educated on
on IP law and figuring out kind of everything and working with the best attorneys and we found the best people and working through the rebranding process and kind of going through discovery of what is a brand you know like when I started it I kind of just picked a name that that I liked and yeah we trademarks we did all the right things but I didn't do any diligence to see if there were other brands using similar names and so this time around I
had to be like what's a brand name that could Champion a business going forward we've been in business for 5 years people know about us it's not a massive business but it's growing and what's one that's protectable and you've got a timeline because you've got a person on the other side saying change your name by this date or we're going to sue you and it's just like so you got a gun to your head and you've got this huge list
of things you need to accomplish and it was incredibly daunting and and this was you know the one time uh like had no one else to lean on like my team couldn't do this for me investors couldn't I had to do all of it and kind of absorb all of the stress work directly with the like I don't have a like I didn't have a co-founder or an operating partner at that level so like it's me on email chain with all the attorneys
understanding all the complexities of it and then figuring out how are we going to go down this process and so yeah it was ultimately the stress of that and but like I said now kind of a few years removed I'm incredibly thankful for that period I just like learned so much like the bio not of my co-founder that was kind of what I coin as like 150 Grand that was my MBA I learned so much during that process just around what is a
shareholder agreement what's the importance of it like around Co co-founder Dynamics and values and biots and the way we had to do everything I learned so much at that period this was now another learning opportunity of like oh okay we're we're operating in a different League now where like this is a thing and people you have to play a little bit of Defense people are going to throw like shoot arrows at you you
know and and so that was an arrow and ultimately I let the second Arrow hit me which was my reaction you have the first Arrow which you can't control the second arrow is like how you deal with it and I forget where I'm quoting that from but someone says that I loved it cuz it's like you can choose not to hit by the second arrow and I chose to kind of like not do the right things in terms of taking care of myself I give myself
Grace now because I didn't know any better I didn't have protocols built I didn't know I was going to get burned out because similar to work life balance I believe burnout is the result of working long time a lot on things you that don't fill your cup that are out of line with your mission it's not from overworking the common thing is like oh if you work 880 hours a week you're going to burn out it's not true I can
work 80 hours 100 hours a week on things I love and feel very energized and excited and you're obsessed with it but working that 80 hours on this legal stuff and which was completely counter to what I wanted to do in our mission it
was it was such a distraction and a sideshow and it's draining it was incredibly draining the stress the anxiety around it I smile right cuz it's just like if I think back it's there's so many incredible stories and it was
just like such a rewarding thing to go through knowing we've been on the other side and we've now under our new name M way sold more product and than we did ever as our old name but like it just yeah it was incredibly difficult it goes to show you that like as you get more successful you start to attract attention a lot of people like to compete with lawyers instead of product that's the losing mindset those people
that are doing that are like operating from a place of fear and they're playing more defense than offense and that's not how I like to operate I'm much more of a friends in business kind of guy I think like business is not uh Zero Sum I think everyone can win the markets are massive especially in the sock space it's a $50 billion Market but yeah we went from um no no legal issues to three in one year so it wasn't just that one I got like
within the next six months got two others around completely unrelated things as well and I was just like it was almost comical you know it's just like kicked me while I was down and but I learned how to deal with those things we resolved all of them um but yeah man it's it's it's something you just kind of have to go through what went into the decision to Rebrand instead of fight so every bone in my body wanted to fight
right I came from a career of where like you're in a sport you're competitive like your number one goal is to fight is to win right not physically but like fight for that Podium spot like that's what you're doing but I had to this time prioritize everyone else as well and think through what how does this affect not just me but everyone involved like I mentioned and it was just a lot of discussions you know first it started
with like if we do decide to fight what's that look like and the quotes I got were it could take you two years per country you fight this in and up to a million dollar there's the financial and then there's the brain drain of doing that and so you weigh that against what are the financial and other implications of changing the name and ultimately you know what I landed on was this understanding of what our brand is which
is why this whole process was incredibly rewarding is cuz got to really dig into like why do people buy our product if we were a brand like a luxury brand where were trading on our name as a big piece of the value this was going to be a big problem but we were product driven so people bought us because they loved the product the name in that in that scenario was a reference to the product and the way I thought about it was like
I broke brand down into kind of Three core components and I like to use kind of like analogies to help visualize things I I visualized a brand as a human and we'll use you as an example okay so you've got three things primarily you have your name how you look and your essence and so your name is how I'm going to reference I'm going to call you or I'm going to talk to you about other people but if you came to me and said
you know now my name is Dave that would be like a little weird to take some adjusting but like it doesn't change who you are whatever no problem we can figure that out how you look if suddenly you came and had shoulder length hair
somehow and yeah and and changed how you look and look completely different it would take some getting used to to recognize you but ultimately you'd be the same person and I would still want to hang out with you if if you came
looked the same had the same name but we're a completely different person and our interactions were different I would question whether or not you were the same person whereas you changing your name or how you look doesn't change who you are brand is ultimately how you make someone feel and it's the essence of the company understanding that gave me a lot of kind of like a much more kind of positive path forward of realizing okay
we're changing the way people reference us and we can communicate this story we're not changing how we look we're able to maintain our logo we're able to maintain our product and everything that made us visually look the way we do that's not changing our mission and vision that's not going to change it's going to evolve with our community with our customers but we had to change our name and so once we understood kind of
like what are the implications here and how should we be thinking about it it became a lot less daunting not easier but less daunting to figure out we're just changing how people reference us and thankfully we uh people don't buy
our product because we put our name on it you know our name is just the way that we're referenced in the world for the most part and there is Goodwill there's not to say that a name is not important it is incredibly important
which is why we took so much time to figure out a new one once we could communicate that message and do that authentically and try to get that message to as many existing customers as possible um we can control the narrative there and also understanding that this only really affected people who have heard of us and when we looked forward it's like all the majority of the growth was still in front of us so this doesn't
actually matter for people that never heard of us cuz they wouldn't know our current name from a hole in the wall so it's like okay that also makes it a little less daunting is like we have a community of customers here that know about us we know how to reach them and we're going to be very authentic so we actually ended up creating like a little YouTube series where I walked people through and brought them along on the
rebranding process I like here's what we're doing we interviewed like hundreds of people of our customers being like what does the brand mean to you we're going to evolve this and we're going to actually like take it in a direction that you now help us build when the name changed that was almost a part of the ego I had attached to like I'm made this thing it's mine that's where that kind of like left which I think was really a
good thing I was like this is our brand now this is the customers brand this is the team's brand we're all building this and I think that's really important for an entrepreneurs to let go of that my mind mind um because you need to be able to delegate you need to be able to bring in people that are better than you you need to realize that your job as the entrepreneur the founder is to really get the thing going and and if you're
the person to scale it do that as well but you need to build the system around you so that was also a really unique time where I was like it felt like what I had created the name I created kind of died a little bit like that phase died a little bit and we were reborn as like I had this kind of other analogy it's like up to that period we were you know we were a caterpillar in the first 5 years and we went into a cocoon and emerged a
butterfly it's like it called it our butterfly moment and you know although like we look different with a new name or whatever we're still the same thing we're just kind of now we've got wings and now we can fly and like it was kind of this like beautiful little way I I made myself feel better and explained that to the team and is like this is our butterfly moment you know we can either like I said earlier we can choose to let
this this unfortunate situation hold us back or Propel us forward and so we went through the mindset of like how do we actually use this as a springboard how do we bring the community along for us and actually walk them through this and make them feel involved and like their voice was heard and it end up working out really well for us I suspect you're going to have a lot more legal challenges as you go from eight figures
to nine to hopefully 10 uh as you get more and more attention at dinner last I think David said this too he like you know you're not a real entrepreneur so you get a legal letter right and that he's not the first person to say that to me and it's just so hard when you get the first one like anything in business you know it's like the first time it happens to you you feel like you're the only one in the world this is happening
to and it's very lonely especially if you don't have a network like if you don't have a network in particular that can be very scary I thankfully at that time I had people to be like oh this happened they're like oh no big deal
like you you'll deal and now I I I dealt I met with a young kind of something similar was happening I'm like no you'll be okay and it felt good to kind of be that voice I could see them kind of like starting the wheels were starting to
turn and starting to get stressed I was like L just trust me I was in your position like you will be okay but you need to do this you need to like take care of yourself and kind of walk them through what we did ultimately if we can share those lessons I think they're so important I welcome the challenges I'm I'm I'm happy to be in a period of like Smooth water right now um but you know ultimately like the challenges like I
said are how we grow and uh you're right these are just it's part of business it's like people are are shooting arrows and you're going to get hit it's what are you going to do about it and learning that what seems like a death blow often is not is is how you build that resiliency and the ability to keep pushing forward so now when we got the each subsequent legal letter that initial shock impact and how I dealt
with it was was better and improved a lot and how I managed those things and and that's ultimately the goal is how how can you build that resiliency and how can you build the teams like we've got incredibly great you know attorneys
now and and processes for when these things happen you only build those out the first time it happening right so like no one's building up an IP attorney team and a whole process around IP infringement if you don't have issues
there I can say things you can't but like some of the stuff that people are claiming is just like absolutely ridiculous like it shouldn't be granted that this has you know any sort of intellectual property rights whatsoever yeah and I'm I'm intentionally having to be quite vague and not even mentioning what our previous name is because that's that's in these agreements of like what I can and cannot say but you're right
it's the unfortunate thing about IP law in specifically is it it almost exclusively operates in the gray area right in in trademark infringement in particular what they're looking for is will the non-observant consumer in other words a person who knows nothing who's not paying attention would they be confused between one brand and another that come down to logos or words and that's a hard thing to prove and ultimately who's going to prove that
over time is the person with a lot of money because they're going to argue different things Battle of bank accounts the Battle of bank accounts it's a battle of time right like how much time are you willing to spend like I said it was like much more than the million dollars it was the two years the two years with no certainty so I was like that's too much of a looming you know too big of a risk too big of a risk and
generally these things are are without they're pretty baseless but it uh they're usually bigger companies with Firepower I want to come back to the Mosaic or balance uh with two young kids uh rapidly growing business what have you learned about using your time effectively it's had to evolve right cuz I've been in a few different I've worn a few different hats to the different scale of our business and like as a a Founder you start day one doing
everything and as the business evolves you start to hire people but you're still doing a lot of the things and you're micromanaging you're not you're you know I had done this before so I do all the mistakes and you're you're overriding things and and you don't know any better but eventually you start to learn like I mentioned with kind of how we evolved after the Rebrand like you've got to bring in better people than you
and understand how are you best applied right how are you the most effective in your job and how I manage all that now is like I kind of had to for myself relearn what work is how do I hold myself to account how do I judge myself because the other kind of downside of Entrepreneurship is you don't have a lot of feedback as a Founder when you have a boss you're getting feedback you know if you're hitting marks or not and you know we
have investors and stuff but our investors are also like entrepreneurs and they're great so they're not exactly kind of uh keeping tabs uh as much as like a bosswood for example and so you have to one hold yourself to account and figure out what that looks like uh and for me I had to reinvent that I like work today is not what it used to be it's not Hands-On the tools as much it's not overriding decisions it's not getting too into the
weeds it's not losing touch I still have a very uh firm kind of finger on the pulse of the business I have a lot of consumer feedback sent directly to my inbox I want to know what's going on at that level but it means not getting involved in the weeds and in kind of doing those jobs and so work for me is how do I like the Mosaic how do I holistically make sure I'm in the best mindset to have a good idea I say my my
job is to really have a good idea once a quarter like a really good idea and and those ideas move the needle quite substantially and they often require a lot to go into those ideas but I've got such incredible people working on kind of the day-to-day week to week month-to month stuff my job is to be looking 6 to 12 months out and then further but typically 6 to 12 months because I think beyond that you're guessing and 6 to 12
months we can make a pretty good idea where we need to be going um and ultimately it's to have those good ideas so how do I put myself in a position to have those good ideas that's a lot of reading that's a lot of consuming just basic information out there so reading even just like the the publicly traded companies in our space reading the reports how are the CEOs thinking you know how's the market looking at these
businesses and what are they saying it's networking with people extracting those insights call like almost like engineered Serendipity as well it's like how do you put yourself in a bunch of different situations to just extract an idea how can you go idea harvesting I look at that as my job to basically go out there and collect the information come back and synthesize it and apply it in which way makes the most sense for
our business and of course like that's not all all I do I would love to that's all I do but I get pulled into you know the in a business problems blow uphill and so there's still those things but thankfully I've got incredible people
that kind of head those off now as well and my area of excellence and like where I'm the most effective is when I'm creative and so I'm creative when I'm not stressed when I'm creative I'm thinking about those ideas and
networking and kind of operating but the lack of stress also comes from taking care of myself and so it's been tough though to redefine work as that because it doesn't look like sitting in front of a computer it doesn't look like 9 to and so I had to battle with this like am I working hard enough and it was this this realization that like oh I'm out of the death grip phase that's no longer serving me I can't just sit down and
death grip a good idea I can't just sit there with a a Google doc and be like good idea time that's not how it works anymore my my my work is 24/7 the Mosaic it could be something my wife says like she's incredibly smart like she gives me tons of ideas she's the real co-founder in the business right like those early days who am I going over everything with like her level of business knowledge would be higher than you know people
going with mbas like she's seen it all talking to her about things walking through problems talking to everyone it's just like work looks like that and so it's spending time with family but it's it's are you can you extract something is there an Insight that comes out of that as well and another way to look at the mosaics is Seasons right there's Seasons where you need to be busier and I've really identified where
those seasons are and and that's communicated with my family and you know my wife and partner and where that's going to be kind of all in and like what we'll just say what season are we in right and and how do we adapt to that and make sure that we're operating at the best of our ability in in all areas that matter what have you learned about Simplicity and focus when it comes to operating a business that most people
Miss I think the tendency to do more is just the common the common path people go down they're like okay I've got some level of success how do I replicate that by doing more so like for example we sell socks should you sell underwear what people fail to realize there is have you fully maximized the opportunity that's in front of you I mean really optimize it I mean the power of focus is so important the way I kind of like explain this to
our team is imagine you're running a race and you're in the lead pack and you're you're doing a good job and out of the corner of your eye you kind of catch another race going on you're like oh that looks fun and you hop the barrier and you end that but now you're middle and back of the pack you didn't prepare for that race you don't really know the landscape oh and you're you're now falling behind in the race you're
running because you haven't built the infrastructure to maybe have another teammate that could run that race who trained for for example that'd be like hiring or developing a different line of business but like what a lot of entrepreneurs do is they try to run multiple races and that's like a Surefire way to burn yourself out and also just not give the attention and focus to what really matters we're taught that like to get more you have to
do more and I just don't think that's true I think to get more you should be doing less typically you should be subtracting so going into this year we are very clear on our goals almost like a bit of an security we were chying about this too is like are socks enough you know is it a big enough goal but outside of my own ego it's like why aren't socks enough right it's a like I said $ 50 billion doll industry we're a
leader in it and we're doing really well and we're of that market size we're just scratching the surface if you would even say that right it's a massive market and so what I always go back to is like we've barely maximized the opportunity here we're at the start line still why would we do anything else and we love doing this and I think that level of focus empowers you to like really become an expert at it and become a master of
it and and extend the time Horizon not to say we won't do other things in the future but right now the best opportunity we have in front of us is what we're doing so why would we take any of that Focus away and every time we've kind of faltered over the past years it's been like I said chasing a silver bullet or trying to go down a path that is just out of line of our circle of Excellence you know like why
are we doing this other than and it it wasn't really a those paths were never something I was like this is what we need to do like the conviction I have around socks it was advice or or or grasping for growth or trying to figure it out and I think like in anything in life like focus is so incredibly important and business is also just so hard like life there's just always things coming at you being able to simplify what you're doing your
day-to-day to deal with those coming in like I said earlier we're we now of course still have problems but our ability to deal with those problems is incredible right because we're not so underwat with everything we're trying to
do we're just so ready to deal with what's ever coming that way and I think the focus and and just the the mental Clarity around it and being okay with socks you know which is it it sounds kind of funny now that I say it but just
being okay with that is is is so important and it's uh it's just unlocked this level of like love of what we're doing again when it comes to design how do you go about anticipating what people want it's become more data driven in the early days I designed what I liked of course and young entrepreneurs or people starting their first business they have Solutions looking for problems so that's what they teach you in business school
like come up with a solution and go try and find the problem whereas you should be solving problems right you should be looking for it and particularly if it's your first business you should be solving a problem you deal with cuz
otherwise why are you qualified to do that and so like I said earlier I was solving my problem of a pair of socks that could could do it all figure out where your advantages are and you know what product path you want to go down
and why that why that matters I'm not that unique what I like there's likely millions of people that are going to like these designs as well and so that was The Simple Start not trying to guess what people wanted I was really trying to just solve my own problem that's evolved now to having core categories of what we know people like and like I mentioned earlier the designs are a way that we get people into the business so
we kind of design things around nature animals food abstract funny and that's really a way to evoke some sort of emotional response from people give them that kind of like giggle or or laugh that maybe they want to buy that pair and it makes them feel a certain way but ultimately what's super exciting too is we found that designs act as a certain level of inspiration for people it's one of the first pieces of clothing you put
on in the morning and what I would do with socks is I would lay them out like how I'm feeling that day is the kind of design I would use and I heard that from customers and friends as well they're like oh I've got this important meeting today this is the pair of socks I wear for that um so I think that's a really cool aspect of the product too is is like can our product be this thing you put on in the morning that inspires you
to go after your big goal one of our internal kind of goals is to inspire personal best that's kind of why we do what we do at a brand level we don't really care if you get to the Finish Line first we want to make sure you get to the start line you try and you set a goal and you actually go for it I think that's just so important move forward and and kind of remove the outcome but like really focus on getting started and
yeah so ultimately like the designs Follow That kind of pathway and and we we're trying to inspire people but also just give them what we know they like our bestselling stuff and what people buy the most of are just really basic stuff and I've kind of evolved into wearing more basic designs we're both wearing basic versions of your socks that's that's the season I'm in is more Bas well I got like more of a retro
inspired kind of design going on which I really like right now but yeah the designs are just this fantastic way people Express themselves and I love seeing what our customers how how they kind of move move through the world with
them on and I love to ask them when I see like hey why' you choose that as well like why does that mean something to you we've got incredibly talented designers now and they use a lot of kind of insights and and data and then
sometimes we'll just throw at the wall too like I'll have an idea you know like of course like founder has an idea for some stupid and we'll try it and typically those don't do well one thing I have had to get better at is not letting my preferences dictate what goes out so if I dislike a design I have to ask myself I have to remove kind of my personal preference be like do I think our customer base will like this design
because we're now much bigger than my preference and it's no longer the million or so people that are like me it's it's much bigger than that and so that was challenging cuz like it is your business and you ultimately kind of want it to be in line with what you like but again it it plays into that like it needs to evolve to be much more than you because I like for example one of our best on designs right now is a cat and I
don't like cats so I'm just like secretly I'm like I don't want to see it do so well but at the same time I'm like hey people love it you know and like cool power to them too like people love cats I don't like cats you know I'm
allergic to that's why I don't like them but I think that's really cool and that was important is getting out of my own way too and realizing like that comes down to just hiring good people in general it's like you hire them because
they're better than you it's like so guide them and have your inputs but you know make sure you ultimately let them bring forth something that is better than what you would have done as well what have you learned about taking big swings I think it comes down to like why are you taking that swing so I've taken big swings that were authentic and they were like the big goals like even just starting the business or trying to go
after certain you know athletic goals but then there's big swings that are trying to solve problems in a faster way so maybe making a big higher that you're trying to rush because you think they're going to come in and be able to solve all your problems just choosing a co-founder because you think it'll be more fun like these are just never good reasons to kind of take big swings because you're relying on Hope and that
Hope's just generally a bad strategy the big swings I've taken where they weren't in line with my authenticity and kind of why we're doing them like like I talked about earlier that that personal mission and drive of why are you doing what you're doing like how like that's what's going to take you through the hard times that's what's going to make you endure and and if you're going to take the big swing you've got to know it's going to
come with a lot of turmoil it's going to be challenging and you've got to be ready to back that up when I think about it now I try to imagine I'm in a room with 100 people and I'm explaining my rationale for taking a big swing and I like to imagine that like I need to do a good enough job that the majority of the people be like that makes sense at least that's rational that the why you want to do that so I try to take myself out
metaphorically put myself into a room and be like would the mo would most people agree with this and then the second question I'd like to ask is like and would I be happy with this decision in 5 years so I'd like to extend the time Horizon on that it's like is this solving a short-term problem but creating a long-term one is something I've had to learn the hard way of course but I really try to do that now and even
if it's going to be short-term good long-term bad I just no way it's just it's not worth it what have you learned about hiring I learned that I got really lucky early on and so that like I talked earlier about the worst thing of like hacks or or doing hard things that work out for you is that you get lucky so I got incredibly lucky with my first few hires who are all still with us um and they've scaled and grown with the
company and they're leading major parts of the company which is incredible During the period of high growth um we had to build the team and build it fairly rapidly because we started growing pretty quickly and and honestly I just was not experienced enough to to really do that properly and you know hiring for what I would say now are the wrong reasons hiring for org chart not really what needs to be executed um
hiring in ways because that's just how it's been done cuz I was just trying to like look around what had been i' never done this before not really questioning if we should be hiring or subtracting right so a lot of hiring happens because there's just a lot of inefficiency in the organization and I think that's a really important thing is like do you need a person or a process or do you need to stop doing that entirely and so
when we were half the size we are now we had twice as many people as we do now now which is crazy because we were just so inefficient I really didn't understand the concept of subtraction and how we could build efficiently the
biggest hiring mistake I made was thinking like you know going into our second year of not hitting the growth goals like I arbitrarily said ego really attached to it like we need to do better we need to kind of keep the good times
rolling you know Co was this big inflationary period for e-commerce businesses and direct consumer businesses like everyone started shopping online you got this huge boom and the market started to draw down really hard and so you're trying to to find growth and exceptional growth in a market that's going down it's it's very challenging but I was kind of hard-headed about it and I was like surely we just need an experienced
person to come in and Lead marketing I ran a good process in terms of dilc in the person that I ended up hiring but the mistake I made was not filling the top of final I didn't get enough candidates of that same quality to compare and contrast them again I was they were able to tell me exactly what I wanted to hear I got good references you know all the typical things yeah ultimately the lesson I learned there was like
I need to actually take what they're saying compare it to other people as well and so I took a big swing that was this is one of those big swings that I took that wasn't authentic it was like it was trying to accomplish something
that like trying to force something trying to force something and shorten the time Horizon and it just went incredibly wrong you know it turns out they were not exactly truthful about their experience like they weren't as
good at the job as they were they were working other jobs during ours it was a remote they were you know based in the US we're here in Canada I got played it felt like almost violating cuz it was just like totally like like I'd never dealt with that before it was it was just just it was very weird it didn't only work it caused a lot of internal conflict as well because like it was a big org shift the guy currently had
running marketing was now replaced with this this expert and that's you know wasn't a great move on my part as well and you that was kind of the last STW you know like last year mid year is where we kind of like that didn't work out that's where I just like wiped the table clean I said like here's everything we're not doing anymore cuz we're just going to strip this down we're going to subtract and rebuild cuz this just isn't working
and I don't care about these growth goals anymore like we need to get back to a place where we're operating authentically and doing good work and and fulfilling our mission we're just like we're not even listening to the customer anymore right we're doing things trying to chase growth and that chasing growth will will as a consequence force you to start doing things that you know aren't inherently good for your brand or you go into new
categories that don't make sense you'll change messaging that's out of line with why your customers are there in the first place and so again as painful as that hire was and getting that wrong it was just kind of the last draw of like another lesson learned for sure but last draw of like no I need to rethink how we're doing everything right now and the internal team and that's where you went for Simplicity and sort of focus yeah
that was July of 2023 I was like this is where we're resetting and that's really like the success we're seeing now is the result of a thousand things we've done over the last year it's not we're not doing anything special right now but the the the choices we made in July and subsequent choices after that all built this forward momentum of do doing the right thing that are now all working and so people you could ask me right now
it's like what are you doing that's leading to your your growth this year I couldn't really answer that question cuz it would be well here's how much time do we have right are we going to do 8 Hour podcast cuz there's literally a thousand things we did it started with subtraction but it goes much deeper than that it goes It goes you know into everything that we do and it's been so fulfilling to do that though because
like from that point on we've just been building and it's just been it's it's felt way more like it did previous to like the the tough times I remember we went for a walk July last year and we were talking about Bill Walsh's book The Score will take care of itself instead of focusing on the revenue the score just focus on the things you control the revenue will be the revenue right I can't like go like the early days where
I could force my classmates to buy a pair I can't go force people to buy socks now and I think like it's not going to move the needle if you're knocking on doors well exactly maybe a little bit but yeah not not not where we needed to and I'm not shy to still get out there in hand toand combat I will do it if you're focused on the work and you're focused on fulfilling the promise you have to your customers like the
results will come if you if you do a good product and you Market it well the goal for us is socks on feet the product is so damn good I want to get more socks on feet because then people will come back so how do we do that effectively the same's true of sport right like every time I got to the start line to race like anything could go wrong there's no guarantee I'm going to win like if I focus too much on the result
you lose sight of everything else that's important of just actually executing like my job was actually just to do what I trained for and that's all you can really do right like there's people out there be like we don't have goals I
think goals are still important I think goals are incredibly important you need a North star but that's how we think about goals much more of a North star than like we need to hit this like because those are fairly arbitrary and
we're not a public company you know we're not having to like do earnings reports that are going to move our stock price it's like it doesn't matter right if we're doing good business and we're growing and our customers are happy and we're profitable and we can do that over 20 years we've got a pretty damn good business I have a saying with the kids which is the lock patience changes the outcome there's a natural pace to a lot
of things and we get into a lot of trouble when we try to speed that up I agree with that wholeheartedly that has been kind of the theme sometimes these things can work but I think very rarely over the long term they they do that's not to say don't try things as they come up too I think like I always try to be cautious of of telling people like oh don't try the hacks just focus on long term sometimes you need to try things
and you need to like touch the stove once or twice but generally speaking if you prioritize the long-term and do good business it's going to work well and in life like even with um just Health man it takes so long you know it's just like if you actually want to build a resilient body and a healthy body like it's just it takes time same with the business and Sport and results it's just like be kind to yourself I found it's
like you don't need it all right now you know just like one foot in front of the other steady progress you went through a process recently to learn not to care as much about what other people think about you or what you're doing I kind of had this current fear or like I got to a certain level in my cycling career where I peaked and but it wasn't where I wanted to Peak it wasn't kind of the ultimate goal of well the ultimate goal
would have been winning being the best in the world right I never got there um one year I was number one in Canada but like I didn't I don't feel like I kind I had unfinished business there I just didn't reach the top and you know looking back there were a lot of things I wish I did differently when I was looking here I was like I don't want that to happen again so I was trying to search for like what am I not doing have
I never done before that I should be doing to try and challenge myself and grow so I actually texted a mutual friend of ours Andrew Wilkinson and I was like here's kind of what I'm going through I didn't know if it was therapy I needed to do I didn't know if it was a business coach like I I just knew I needed to work through this and understand myself better and and just learn more about like what is my superpower ultimately like where should
I be focused and I just want to make sure I'm doing everything I can and he mentioned this guy Jack SK who does this road mapap Pro where Andrew had done it and a few other people in the business Community had done it and it's this kind of extensive process where you work with Jack and you do some clinical kind of like psychology tests understand kind of your Tendencies and he does interviews of your close friends and family people that have
opted in to being around you um for the most part they see something in you uh and then interview calls and coaching calls with him and the goal of that is to kind of understand yourself better and understand and you know what your superpower is and I didn't go into it with the goal of trying to care less about what people think that was an outcome of the process I actually didn't know what to expect I just knew that I I
wanted to be taken apart and put back together I wanted to like actually piece by piece really understand myself like I wanted to dig into the childhood and be like what does drive me why do I do the things I do why am I so intense why do I have these goals and and need to what or and need to achieve them why are my expectations so high a lot of why I was moving through the world was acceptance and and caring about what people thought
like like attaching my worth to how other people thought about me and that was a really unique Insight of just like I wasn't living authentically you know and I was kind of limited by the belief of others I I never really struggled with caring what people think unless I like admired them or car like cared about their opinion and I think it's important to like prioritize what people you care about think but that can't limit you and it
can't change you know what you feel is right and what you need to do as well and so going through that process and and building the um the systems and kind of building the understanding of how do you deal with that like I one thing I I did daily is I I'll kind of like do some journaling uh and I just started asking myself every day when did I not say or do what I was really thinking or feeling cuz I didn't want to moderate myself
anymore that's not to say be rude but it's not to like if if we're having a a conversation and I disagree like I want to be more willing to say that because I don't want to have a fear of thinking that the other person across the table is going to not like me anymore because I disagree it's like is that a good friendship anyways it sounds obvious but a lot of people operate that way right it's it's very natural to like want to
fit in and and want to kind of be accepted and so it can be a bit scary to kind of like be really authentic and it causes resentment if you're holding that in well totally yeah it's it's exhausting right because you're actually not living your true self you're you're like a chameleon and that's where a lot of people who think they may be introverted I think they're just actually limiting a lot they're just kind of molding to their environment
that's why they're so exhausted after this they're just around the wrong people they're not being authentic so yeah learning like strategies on how not to care that's a lot easier said than done but asking myself that question and kind of like knowing I have to be accountable to that allows me to be more authentic cuz like I don't want to answer that question like here's where I moderated myself and I'm happy to say
like I've only like once in a couple months had to like answer that question and and and not uh be like yeah I moderate myself here um it was just out of fear it was like a public speaking there I didn't want to get up and talk it's like like I don't know I cared what people thought for some reason it kind of affected me outside of not caring what people think the the real kind of unlock there was I said superpower and
like it came down that you know like my love and appreciation for sock and the like the utility and how they can improve what I see there and learning how that that can be enough you know like learning that um I would like I
mentioned earlier I was insecure about socks being enough like I I do now feel I'm in a spot where I know a lot about business I've got a lot of experience I kind of had this this angst of like our sock is the best utilization of these
skills that I've built and I kind of mentioned that to Jack he's like well that's kind of silly like if you're doing shoes would that be enough what about tennis rack and I was like oh I've never thought about it that way I was like you know Nike is a great business right it was shoes for such a long time I was like no one ever was like that's a lame business right I was like socks I was like I've mentioned a couple times it's a big
Market I was like why isn't this enough why in my head are socks you know not as good as shoes or rackets or some tech thing it's like it was just this kind of like self-imposed sort of limiter of like I don't know of like I guess caring what people think cuz I don't have a better idea idea right now and I really love what I do and so it was really helpful to understand that cuz it like I said it helped me I was already falling
back in love with kind of the process but it was like it almost allowed me to kind of like fully commit to it again and be like oh no socks you know are enough until the next idea comes I kind of challenged them because I was like oh I did all this work and like socks are my superpower and he's like no they are right now your ability to like take a product and see how it can be improved is your superpower but you don't have
another product in mind right now he's like that will come and you'll know when it comes like he's like be okay with where you are and that's been a kind of theme for me is you know I got to see the feedback and read the report and you know one of the things that like Rob tries to rush through life and I do like I'm always like on to the next thing I don't celebrate the wins and it's just like I'm trying to rush to the next
thing and it's like as I get older too and I'm trying to appreciate the moments and smell the roses and a good example of this is when I was cycling I got to travel the world and see all these in places I was so intense and so focused that I would not enjoy anywhere I'd be in Spain or Italy and I would be so tunnel visioned that I didn't even give my time myself time to like appreciate where I was and I always told myself
I'll be back I'll appreciate it later I haven't been back right like it just ended and I look back I'm like I think I would be a lot more fulfilled if like I actually just smell the roses right cuz like the results are one thing but like the experiences and the opportunity just to like be there and like we always look back and like we don't talk about the results we talk about the experiences in the journey and unfortunately I just
like didn't take time to appreciate the journey and so I'm really trying to do that now and you know it's just way more fulfilling to be like we're in it one of my favorite quotes is one of my favorite shows the office and it's something the final episode and Andy says uh he's kind of reminiscing he's like um I wish someone told us we were in the good times like in the good old days right he's like they're looking back and
they're like I wish they would tell you before it ended and I'm kind of getting Goosebumps talking about it it's like I'm in the good old days right now right like I know when this business is over as tough as it is or whatever we're
going through even like raising young children I try to remind myself like these are the good old days like another thing I read was like you know like it can be hard to take your dog I have a dog hard to take them out in the rain
but when they're gone how much would you pay to take that dog for a walk right now it's almost like rewinding a little and just being like remember when you wanted what you have now yeah yeah and being happy and content with that but also still you know striving for more and maybe there's a title of a book by David soal which I like which is pleased but not satisfied and it's sort of like you can be happy where you're at and you
can still drive for more that's something I've struggled with is like I'm incredibly happy this year and like and I've been you know struggling with like people ask like what's your biggest challenge right now and I'm like or what's your biggest problem I'm like I feel like I've spent 2 years fighting problems that like I'm in kind of like a Sol phase right now on one hand hyper ambitious but on the other hand content
cuz tent is almost like counter to ambitious right and it's how do you balance those two things not to use balances it's like but how do those two things live simultaneously and and maybe it comes down to Seasons That's thing I've ultimately been like when I'm in a creative space it's not tied to the result as much you know it's like it's not like yeah I'm in a place now that's incredibly hard to even imagine 10 years
ago but there's still so much more I want want to go and but I'm not driven and I never was driven I think that's why I go back to sport is like the ultimate motivator where I said everything's earned not owed the goal of starting my business was never financially driven it was this deep desire to accomplish something and that hasn't gone away you know and that that won't go away and so there's no level of income where that's going to kind of
leave me and so it comes down to like how are you resilient or why are you doing what you're doing it's that personal mission of like why are you doing it and being authentic I think that's a great way to the question we always end with which is what is success for you this changes over time because my life's changed so much over the last few years I feel like I'm learning a lot of hard lessons and a lot of great
lessons and I look at my young children I'm like I want to do the best job I can to share these with you and give you kind of a bit of a head start you're going to go through pain you're going to go through tough times but I want to do as good of a job as possible to prepare them with these lessons that I've learned and I I try to do that um through young entrepreneurs too like I do a lot of work with the local schools
and I I try to share these lessons on different platforms too just cuz like I didn't have anyone to go to you know like I didn't have that my whole network was was athletes and all that so like when I was going through all the early challenges it was kind of me and just internalizing and I'm like I want to be that voice that says you'll be okay right and I think success looks like being able to show my kids what hard
work looks like show them what doing that while having like a great family life as well and you know honoring my partner and that just sharing the lessons you know that would be that would be success as the kids grow up and
they're in a good spot you know like what's what's more important that and I think ultimately having fun while doing all that operating in this zone of being healthy and being happy and that would be success man that would be winning