The Performance Paradox: How an Elite Athlete Built a $10M Business Breaking Every Rule | Rob Fraser
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For ten years, I woke up with a very clear idea of what I wanted to do with my life and where I was gonna. And I loved that. I woke up every day with the fire, my belly, saying, this is the goal.

Here's how when I get IT and here's what i'm going. And then almost seemingly overnight, when I walk away from the sport that's gone, your identities gone. You know, like the day before I retire, it's high. I brought razer, fresh onced, cci, sts, IT.

Was everything the next day that's gone and over the next year that fades awake because you're no longer on the scene and the friends, they're still friends but you don't see them in, the common interest starts to fade. And you know, that kind of LED to this dark period for me. I was like, what am I gonna do with my life?

Welcome to the knowledge project on your host shame parish in a world we're knowledges power. This podcast is your talk. Get for mastering the best what other people have already figured out if listening to this IT means you're not a supporting member.

Members get early access, no ads, my personal reflections at the end of the conversation, access to the highest from the books on reading hand edited transcripts, and so much more. Check out the link in the show notes for more. My guess today is rob fraser, founder and C.

E. O elway, a rapidly growing direct consumer brand, disrupting the premium performance sock market. Rob's entrepreneur journey is a master class in overcoming obstacles and aling a business. In just a few years, ought has gone from start up to multi million dollars success story. The company has achieved depressive year over year growth, progressive through board five, six, seven and now eight figure revenue.

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I mean, the mindset really comes down to like a personal mission. I mean, if you think about doing both of those things, rather sport or anything hard, having some intrinsic reason or some motivation or some personal drive to something, something really pushes you forward and pulls you into that goal. A lot 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 stuff times and push through those things when is because you care about something. So that personal mission.

So when I was with sport, IT was this goal to become a competitive cycle, professional cyclist, and reached 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 her, the stress and the idea of kind of not pushing forward wasn't even there. You know, where's look at other parts of my life.

And sometimes you don't push is hard because is no personal mission there. There's no reason to push is not necessarily something you, you, you take that minds 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 larger 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 short in the time line and ultimately think that leads to maybe a quick one here and there, but not longevity. And in business and in sport, the crews are built on longevity. And and that really comes to and to mindset because along that path and anything worth doing, there is so many ups and downs and sideways and with small business, and this is so much going on.

where does that drive come from? Where we born with driver? Is that something we developed 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 love 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 baseball team of 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 cuts but not almost made IT a little bit worse because I would like taste what I would be like to be there and so that started over time to build the drive of like, you know, when I find something i'm good at, i'm going to go all in and I went to win because when I looked around me, the feeling I felt that time was i'm not succeeding in these areas. And everyone, that is seems to be getting some level of acceptance and you know for me is kind of a child and growing up is like maybe that that love that you know what I should strive for um and I just wasn't able to do that. And so like that started to build and build.

So when I found early on, IT was cycling as I go, i'm pretty good at this. I was like, i'm going, 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 or I finally am in the club, I finally am good at something and then I I didn't want to be good out.

I want you to be great. I think that has some destructed kind of tennis to IT as well. But um that's also me where I came promise this feeling of acceptance and you know a chip on my shoulder of not being able to pull IT off so long and seeing my peers do IT and assuming that's what IT .

felt like to be part of the club accepted the one thing that said that there for me actually two things to do was the ability to consistently fail and keep going at such a Young age where you the first person, not packed over and over and over again but you didn't give up or as I think a lot of people would give up. That relates, I think, to the acceptance like your you're striving for. Did you have a brother who got attention or something or for a different reason and you're like striving to sort of like get noticed?

Yeah totally. I mean, so yeah had a Younger brother and he was almost in our childhood the exact opposite. He was incredibly good at sports that came natural. And you know so we're big hockey family. You know, we grew up in a very traditional family around school around ten, and hockey was the big one.

And my my brother was really good at you know, tripoli 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 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 like I anna, be good. I want to make them proud with something right, like not particularly greater school and enjoy IT know. I just I never really understood IT was an articulate to be 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. I 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 feel 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 most important lessons you can learn from winning.

But a lot of the most important lessons in the stories I tell him, what 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 propelled me forward that, you know, i'm thankful for all those failure. They're incredibly difficult at the time. And when you're going through them, you day to go away. And i've always found one year, three years, five 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. yeah. Is a training ground for business.

Yeah, yeah. I think for life as well. Honestly, I think you know what a 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 puppy on that competitive sport. At least in my experience as a competitive cyclist, I was five times on the national team for about ten years travel around the world racing my bike. And what that taught me was a bunch of things, most importantly, failure.

Resilience is like, like how do you ever like we would race maybe just say, ten times a year and maybe when once or twice so you're fAiling more than you succeed? And how are you dealing with that and building forward and how you dealing with injuries. But more than that, it's how are you networking yourself? So I managed myself as well.

So I went negotiating my spots, ship contracts. I was booking worldwide logistics. You know, remember when I was six teen, 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 naming the team that year, I even know what world championships was. I was so Green in the sport, so new to the sport.

I got an email from the national federation is like, hey, you've been named to the the world tag team is in italy next month like, we'd love you to come and I remember emAiling back in being like, no, I can't dive school and because I had no idea, I was so Green and then I I showed the email to my parents, like, what did you do? Like email them back like you're gonna go, will talk to the school, will get you out and like to go um and so I held 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 lao, 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, end up in europe and even really know where europe is at that time. Embarrassingly, if you said, point out italy on the map, I work about a tough time.

And so it's like how kind of I just put now 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 when 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 it's important. I don't want to knock on to too bad, but they're teaching you you know all the things you can read about and learn about, right? So all that the the tactics and kind of that the common knowledge is how you would apply that. But I think ultimately in business, what i've learned is like you could know everything but it's how you going to react when shit hits the fan, right?

Um and how are you going to talk to people and negotiate and user 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 newark I did was so incredible. And I just think that sport, if I, if I boy IT all down to like a distinct answer, it's really that IT taught me that everything is earned, not old.

You had to do the work. There is no substitute for the work. That things almost never go to plan and you need to figure IT out uh and then just built so many skills have had performing under pressure, you know talking to people and just just you're merse in IT and there's no getting out of IT.

I just thought that was such a format of experience. You know, everything we will 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 tried to learn the common knowledge. And I have, but the lessons, the the the actual minds that I take to business for almost the last ten years is the same minds that I had when I was competing a 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 lot of similarity ties .

between the two and that yeah in sport I was never the most talented writer um in mostly sport was a manifestation of my entrepreneur tennessee because I like I said, I grow 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 entrepreneur. But I didn't have an entrepreneurship del growing up, but I didn't really even know that was a thing.

I was like I said, traditional family, Normal jobs and sport. And so is like, okay, I have all of these kind of tendencies of you wanting to go after a big goal, willing to take a risk, resilience and point at a sport. You can be pretty successful. My superpower in that. I, with those entremets tennis 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 does coming up on the season before, replicate that at home and practice and study IT, knowing that I had disadvantages?

You know, so I raised downtown mount on bikes, but I grew up in pickering, ontario. There's not a mountain in pickering, ontario. So how do you compete? One of people that live around the world, around mountains of the what I called the B C kids, the people live in bc with all the mountains and burst columbia.

And you have really figure out how to make that work and how I made that work as I would build little fifteen second um parts of the course on the hillside by my house. And what that taught me was I really learned precision in the importance of really executing at a high level and executing when IT mattered, positioning myself and being prepared pair for when the race came to be the most ready I could be that started way before the actual event started. That was studying the course in advance to start of preparation, the training all the off season in this, knowing all to me 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 Better what you know or how much you've done, if you're not prepared petition properly, the pressure will overtake all the talent that you have for sure that the ability execute is so important.

One of the other similarities, ties, 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 mass.

It's a total mess in both in sport being a professional athor competitive athletes. glammis. Zed, you're seeing that the very tip of the iceberg, you're seeing the one percent of the time that IT goes, right?

You're standing on the podium and you're seeing these people succeed. But you're not seeing the early morning, you're not seeing the injuries. You're not seeing the step backs, 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 and the athletic clears in the business successes that we all read about. These are often these ten year overnight successes, right? And people glamorized that and watch on to that and be like, you know, that's what businesses or that's what sport is.

I think that somewhat destructive because IT really misses the true nature of these endeavors, which is brazilians and tough times in a long time to get there as well and we can to get into this world with more people won a hack or they want a shortcut. And I just think it's it's the wrong messaging and it's the wrong a way to approach these things. This is so important to extend the timeline on these things and and really just give you role is IT true.

You tape to your broken rest to a bike to compete.

yeah. I mean, so the way our sport work is you train all winter and you basically compete in the summer. And so you spend so much time preparing for race that you have three months of racing and you would constantly get injured and you would just have to figure how to make that work. And yet leading into one of the biggest races of the year, I had a broken, 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 is like i've worked too hard to just back away from this chAllenge just like so asked myself, what is IT gna take to get this done? You know, I couldn't hold on to the handle bar. I didn't have the strength and says like i'm going to a have the tape because everything's LED to this moment, i'm not going to back down like if I physically can do IT if i'm awake or i'll be there and I think it's those license and and ultimately, we talked about earlier about resilience in that mindset of doing hard things.

And I taught about, you just have to do them. That taught me, you can do IT. You know, like the piano 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 realized that you can come out the other side because that's ultimately where you start over time to build that muscle and able to deal with the really high stress things as they come and stay calm during them. I'd be very surprised that we could teach themselves to do that without going .

through the tough times, even through a bit of a an identity crisis post spot talked me about that yeah.

for ten years I woke up with a very clear idea what I wanted to do with my life and where I was gonna. Uh, and I loved that. I woke up every day with a fire, my belly, saying, this is the goal. Here's how many I get IT.

And here's what i'm gonna do and then almost seemingly overnight I walk away from the sport that's gone your gone you know like the day before I retire its high on ropes er fresh on cyclists the next day it's high on rob razer. Who is that right? I've identified as the 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, early off season, 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 awake because 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 fate. And you know, that kind LED to this dark period for me. I was like, what am I going to a do with my life at this point? I was in my early twenty years, so the rest of my life was still ahead of me.

But I felt so lost, you know, because as I just, I didn't really know to do in 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 gonna do with my life IT sounds a little ridiculous sometimes, but I was just kind of yet was this identity crisis of, how do you reinvent yourself? How do you build a new network around something, you know, 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 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 on my step, but that wasn't really where my my passion was. IT was really about that, fulfilling some large goal and not to be being in kind of control of my destiny. And yes, I was about a two year period of trying to navigate that figure IT out IT really makes 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 applying for jobs, ended up getting into the local college in Victoria, where I lived in Victory bc. For sport management.

I thought the logical step here was a career in sport. Like I said, coaching is like, here's my skills. Said, how do I apply that moving forward? What's the logical thing to do here? So getting the sport management, I summus tansey got a job with the canadian ports itu.

de. 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 camp.

You know, i'm doing what is supposed to be right? This is what everyone says this, 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 yeah, I was in a four year programs for three more years up, but I was starting to get that act like it's going to be over soon and like real life's going to hit.

I'm going to be hard to like go deeper into the career and just kind of go further down this paths on that I really don't want to beyond and I don't know how I got onto but I for some reason listened and listened to red to the for our week for our work week. Um but empires and IT sounds so so try. So it's so common.

I gone to that book and what IT really taught me, I remember exactly where was just walk around the local golf course and I listen the books more than than read them. This idea, listen to the book, really gave an 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 ds interesting. And the way I 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. And I early win, but just a big goal. And that was so exciting to me.

I was like A A new a new path. And that had more long jevon 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, i'm not going to be in coaching or an athlete during 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 dispose 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 or race individually. But you on a team and the team, whether is national or your your sponsorship team, you'll get a kit.

So you all look the same. You look the same as your teammates, socks for this area where you could wear whatever you want IT. And so I would always wear kind of funky coloured socks.

Actually had a sock sponsorship. That was a way that my parents ultimately could pick me out on the hill, because you're watching bunch of bikers come down the hill. And I would wear really loud socks like pink and blue and you can kind of spot that and be like OK that there's rob.

Beyond that was a way to kind of like expressed individuality, right? It's like, okay, you're in the sea of sameness. How can I have a little bit of me out there? And so socks were already in my blood.

So I took that same kind of mentality out of sport into the real world. At school, I would wear those socks in the gym work. And I became known as the sock guy before owning a sock business. uh.

And so when IT became times so like, I must start a business, I start to think of like, what do I know? What do I like and what do I think can be improved? And i'll finally wanted, at the time, I loved brands like lululemon, and red bottles were too like kind of top tear brands for me around the athlete marketing their product of about gist.

I'd loved everything about those brands. Is like I don't really am not technical. I didn't have like a particular sort of skills. I was like a perl seems like a more any 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 a paralo at least you know my my thinking back down was like, ah I kind of know soc soc seemed 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 commission of all of those things.

And I can probably tell a story right now of like why socks for this incredible business opportunity, which they are at the time, I was just like, socks 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, ultimately, the insight was the entire world was moving towards athletica. 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 without clothing of the pants somewhere right now, for example, of the yoga pant.

And I looked at the stock category, um they remain the use case specific. So the recycling socks are running socks or dress socks has like wise under a yoga pant for the foot. That was the ideas.

Like look at the yoga pant, how versatile that is. You can wear an exercising dressed IT up, down. 开始。 我， i like, what a functional, fantastic and fashionable piece of the perl.

So like, why are our socks not like that? And so that was a simple idea. And I got kind of obsessed with IT like.

this can be improved. I remember the first time I tried, 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 prepare of socks that I can get? Put them on your feet.

They sort of cover up your feet. That's what they do. And then I try to, on a pair of yours, and I forget how I get the first pair a front, give IT to me.

And then I instantly went here, webs head. And I ordered, like, I throw out every socks in my drawer. And I just ordered to bring a new draw of sox. I had never thought about the difference between a good para socks and a bad para socks, and I still have no idea, but I know your socks feel really good. What's the difference between a good pair and a bad pair?

So what you said is not uncommon if you think about socks in general there. The world's worst gift is eura kid is where your parents always would get you .

as a gift if you're bad for Christmas. Yes, exactly.

Was almost the punishment. And then as an adult, you've learn to almost hate this product and buy a begrudging at the department stories. And after thought, no one actually thinks about their socks.

And so we're living in this world of ninety plus percent of the population, is thinking a lot about everything they wear, except for one of the most important things, really do not like one of the like. The pair of a pair that touches the ground with you, right, is is kind of foundational to to the feeling right up, the standing, walking and everything you do. The idea that this was an unaware category was super interesting.

But what makes the socks special? I mean, there's so many things like the common socks you'll buy, they're just low quality, the same a, they're not seamless. So they are going to create hot spots and pitching.

They're going to be typically probably low quality cotton. And so they are going to absorb sweat, which leads to blisters. There's a ton of different things.

If you look at, you know, any good athletics. Often specifically are they're going to be seamlessly y're going to be moisture waking. They're gonna have support.

So there's going to be supported. Tly urged to help with the mid foot fatigue. There's going to be a strategic questioning. 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. And IT was born of a personal need, right? Like I said, I was going to school, I was working a job, and I was still training.

And in staying active, I was doing some traffics at the time, and I wanted a pair of socks. I could do all of those things because the cycling socks I mentioned, I would wear school, they weren't great for running. They would fall down the cuff, wasn't impressive enough.

And so I was like, that LED to that kind of discovery, like why isn't this Better and ultimately good pair of socks should be supportive. They should look good. You should feel good. And should we will 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 talks too, right? Like they feel really good around your food.

Your food just feel happy yeah that's the fine baLance of like a hug for your feet. But how do you not make that too impressive? 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 hugging the leg and not fall down, but I also should come off the light 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 in the by a pair typically because a lot of our socks have fun designs on them.

What we recognize early on this socks are this, like I mention, the cycling socks are this way that people can express. And within that, people have different ways they like to do that, whether they like to celebrate different animals they love, or 一两 nature， landscape or their favorite food. So we discovered that, like, it's really hard digitally because primarily sold all online were also sold in storm, but primarily on lightly ast the the majority of the business.

How through the the computer screen of the phone screen can we convince you that the socks 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 cause that has cats on IT.

But what we know is that the best pair of sox you're ever going to put on. And so that person buys the pair of sox. So 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 replaced their socks with IT.

And that that's quite literally in our mission is to like our vision of the business is to replace the soccer. I truly believe that we should be able to make a great all day performance soc that someone could line the whole draw 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 gona wear like that sock could do for you.

Did you have a business when he started? I was in school when I started the business in my second year. I just had the idea, you know, I just want to started business.

I was quite literally listened to that book lying and bad, kind of know, having my nightly identity crisis, sum actio stenio crisis, like I just something like i'm just start a business. I kind of got a Better start, open my apple note, started thinking about different brand names and went to school. And I talk to my good friend at the developed good, uh, A A great friendship with a classmates.

We do all our class process together. We actually got a job together outside of work. I was doing some rap work for a brand. I got him involved for doing some field marketing as we got on well with friends. We worked well together. And I didn't expect the business to work because like there was it's like, what are the odds? Here's this, like former athi guy that kind of like not particularly greater school, has no business experience, who said a goal to build a sock company.

Everyone looked to me like, I was crazy, like some people still do right? And so is like this would be way more fun with a friend, which, by the way, like the world, diverse reason to start a business with someone because it's going to do with a friend that i've learned on highway, but you know ultimately be what I didn't ask myself at the time, which I think is so important for entrepreneurs, as people in general, to ask themselves, is what happens if this goes right? The common knowledge is for people to heads 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 don'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 like what would be more painful, fAiling because I didn't work or fAiling because I did and didn't capture the opportunity, that would be so much more painful. I felt if that kind of happened in my cycling here. So you like i'm working really hard now and not kind of repeat domestic.

But yeah, I started IT with a business partner and IT was fine when I was kind of like just something we are doing. But ultimately, as I started to a little of attraction, like I said, I didn't expected to work. But that doesn't mean that I wasn't incredibly committed.

You know, I was obsessed. The second I did to do IT, I was all and I was reading every business book I could find I was in like I said, I had entrepreneurs nesses. I just didn't know they had manifested in sport for so long as like what 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 treat neuro. As things started to grow, we were pretty lucky with some early success to business started to work.

Um you know the first year we did you know mult six figure revenue of just selling socks kind of around town for the most part the first socks. I also took to school a topper hand to hand combat and sold them to the teachers based like you know we're not friends if you don't buy this. And so that was like how I got started.

It's ultimately, after a year, IT started to get real like the work required nights and weekends as 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 are we wonder of this because we were doing IT for fun.

We are friends. We just wanted to have a good time and try try something and really kill time. And during school, like we always expected to be a school and kind of continue on, but that for me evolved very quickly.

Like, oh, no, I can do this. You know, like, I really like this. There's a big opportunity here. And so in ultimate liver time, that tension started to grow in the gap between our abilities to have conversations, what's going on because I was just like consuming knowledge and trying to to learn such a rate, because I was obsess with IT.

IT became very difficult for us to be aligned on what we wanted to the business wish, ultimately LED him, leaving the business and quitting true form. We didn't have any proper and for that, we can have a shareholder agreement. We didn't like. We just did almost everything wrong when setting up the company, which is really easy to do because there's almost no great resources for helping entrepreneurs and ultimately, to get the proper legal agreements is expensive.

When you have we started the business with a thousand dollars each right support a thousand books in, that's all we had and all when inventory, there is no money for illegal agreement or a lawyer and you're in the honeymoon phase, a business, of course, you're never gonna fight with your partner, right? Everything's great. It's going to be successful. But when he gets real, that's when those those of things are super important, have at least a discussion about there was no discussion. And so he left the business.

There is no resolution and that kind of LED into this this period of where I had to fear how to how to resolve that there was super messine ultimately ended up um coming to an arrangement buying about about and that kind of closing to two and half years into the business kind of march of twenty eighteen is when uh, he officially left the business. I got full control. That's kind of what I pg is like the real star as well as like i'm all in decided to go take out a personal loan to make IT happens like one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, which was insane, right?

Remember, we finally reed on a number and I didn't have that money. I I had student that I had the exact opposite of money in the bank. And but I was so committed around that.

We talked about really around just the mindset and the willingness to kind of just go on. And I went to every bank in town and would just I just like i've got credit kirdall draw out on, i've got a line of credit. I've got some student loans. Um my dad growth and now wife like he was like all 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 because I don't want to ask anyone else 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 put in on my shoulders and go and um and the act of doing that actually my now father in law reached after like, hey look I appreciate that you are wanted, do this, but alone need the money in them forever grateful for that because I was a vote of confidence and IT was IT just IT allowed me to kind of push on. And I was super proud to be able to paying back in a couple years here we paid them out like relatively quickly, and the terms are .

to prefer anyway. But like I like and I take.

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 going to that money would go back first. And I take those sort of things like when people bet on me or, you know, my employees or investors, whatever ticked that incredibly seriously, I did the number one thing. You should be focused on this, like doing right by the people that believe in you back on you.

Who is the first person ever bet on you?

My mom, yeah. So I went to university and dropped out. So that's like, that was a big rift in our family because going to university was the safe path.

That was the known path of, you know, my dad is insurance and you know, my mom, when when he had us stayed home and IT was IT was super traditional, super go to school, get get whatever job, build a family. And so the idea of kind of going all in on this cycling career, the time was just like a pipe dream for the most part. And IT wasn't really anything yet, was a big rift.

But mom, like I could tell deep down, SHE was like, I know you got this, I know you'll figure IT out. Because what I would always say in my parents, the time I know telling you about this yesterday is, like whenever I have these big goals, I kind of hold two belief at the same time. One belief is, i'm absolutely sure I pull this off 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 because they're like, I, anna, believe you, but I need to see some. And what is the plan, dude? yeah. IT ended up working out.

And there was the same thing in business like I have no idea 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 I know you'll figure that out that was, you know, so important. She's always kind of been in my corner like that. And certainly 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 from treating neural like, because they just wasn't a discussion. Like I had all these little things when I had my own little, my own little bike shop repair. I built an office in my bedroom closet.

I was always doing this. I just didn't know what I 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. I just didn't know what I was doing with entrepreneurship for building a business that was just what came nature to me and what I loved to do. And so he knew I was different. So he knew when I was kind of gonna go on a different path, SHE encouraged that which was unlike forever thankful because, you know, it's it's hard to to be the only one that beliefs in yourself sometimes I have.

Important are the people you surround yourself with towards happiness and accomplishing your goals.

I think, is. Is everything really this talk about like businesses 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 in sites. You want to be able to encourage each other.

The power of having like a great networker group around you is kind of a double to sort some times to 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 Jones is a little bit so in particular, like as I started to get some level of modern succession business, my network started to grow. I started to become friends with people that were much further had to me and almost like to this insecurity. For the five years before I was building my business, relatively unknown, didn't really know any 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 think in much bigger, which is, on one hand, great, you know, lessons of thinking bigger and realizing, like, oh, I am limiting myself, but the same time trying to short in the time horizon and 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, is ended up backfiring. You know, like this year in particular, I made a conscious effort to be like, no more i'm going to will go back to to Operating authentically, doing what I feel is right, listening to device around me, but filtering IT and using IT to the best of my ability. And it's going so much Better, it's it's really back in that, that way of Operating authentically.

So there is you I think you have to be carefully, your network grows that you're not trying to compare yourself to those people's much and you 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 willing ness to say, like that's a great idea that once not for me, or how do you synced those ideas? Because in the early days, I thought all 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 most common advice I got from people is, oh, you all socks? Have you thought about doing underwear? Like, yeah, of course I thought about doing underwear.

But like those are complete different supply change psychologies. Now it's gender. Were socks or unisex? Like, there's so many considerations, but on the surface is good advice. And so i've had to really learn that, you know advice is welcomed and appreciated, but it's my job is synthesize and actually use IT when IT makes sense. So I 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 OK was saying no, which is tough when you're surrounded by smart people, right? You've investors, you've got mentors, you've got advisors and of course, they're smart, know what they are doing, but I think is really important as an entrepreneurs know you know your business best, right? Um and the advice 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 are LED to incredible results versus what you were doing last year?

I say the number one thing we talked about was removing ego. Let's just not do things because we think 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 create demand. That's not there are current size right now. We need to be OK with the ebs and flows.

And we don't need to when things are not going well or were in a slower period, we don't need to try and artificially inflate that. We don't need to hell mary silver bullets and like hacks and all these things, they're so appealing to an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs like you're just in the right is so hard.

And when someone has this new hacker, new thing, it's that the falling of like, oh, that one thing i'm not doing is going to unlock all of my, all of my, solve all of my problems, unlock all of the growth. And this is not true. And the worst that can happen is the one time that maybe that ballet does work IT teaches you that oh, through tax here.

So I I always kind of cautionary if you get luck, I just but these hacks typically don't work. What we ended up doing is just extend in the time horizon. You know, like I said, I was trying to rush before.

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 why. I was really me just feeling like I needed, you know, to gain acceptance of people that are accepted me.

He was kind of weird, and he was really this. The self discovery had been like, now these people already accept me. I'm doing what I do.

It's kind of that kid again, right of like, if I don't keep performing and out performing in winning, maybe they won't like any more. I will be expect any and OK like, look, you know, I have to just Operate this authentically. And I asked myself, what would that look like for this business be around in twenty years? Forget about what we grow this year.

How do we build a business that injuries over time and that makes the building so much more fun, like how we actually get that. 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 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, I am obsessed with the customer feedback around IT and falling love with the product serving the customer, extending the time her eyes and not doing things because you're egos dating IT. That's a pretty good recipe for business success. The thing is the most joys, sit down with our team now and we're talking about the future and that 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 they're still chAllenges, you know business is still super hard, but we're dealing with the hard problems commonly. We're like we can figure this out. We've learned the tough lessons and we planned for this versus throwing hill maries.

You know, it's like we are Operating from a position of just trying to play catch up on on hitting our arbitrarily goals that didn't really matter and IT ultimately LED to an unhappy work environment like you just IT was stressful and I just wasn't fun. Like why are you doing this? Like like why we we we do this? Because we we enjoy we do we enjoy learning and improving um and that was that was the big unlock is is ultimately just extend in the time rise and being like what makes us happy running this business.

It's interesting when you think about extending the time horizon there so many different ways to do that, right? Not going into that. Those berating 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 live there. There anything else that comes to mind when you think of extending the time horizon .

in order to extend the time rise? I need to be physically and mentally as healthy as I can be seeing with our team. This doesn't work if for not all Operating to the best ability. The business has been so stressful like any business over the last ten years that IT really took a toll on my body specific 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 my body and realizing that that's not a sustainable path to go on, like being an athlete so long and a Younger and Younger and general was like a death gript through life. And I was just like I learned very early with the injuries I rode through. 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 rising and longevity in mind, right? It's like the same idea of are you Better off consistently working out or going once so we can just like demolishing yourself and the consistency is going to be Better for sure.

I had kind of three goals this year is like get the business back to a place where word thriving and having fun. Get my health back to place right field confident and inspired and like kind of all in on this. And the third was the more personal is just like, you know, I had had a new kid, have two two boys and one was born this year, was really just like I really focus on the family because I had my first kid during like the real thick of business and during covet as well.

And and I really wanted to kind of enjoy the process of this kind like, you know, family, business and health 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 worklife baLance, which is like I I I hate the concept of IT in entrepreneurship.

You like not like a salary worker. Like sure like baLance should be you know something that you're worth thinking about, but in particularly in sport or high performance career or something that you're doing, it's like you need to tell the scale in your favor, right? And that by definition, no baLance.

However, I think what gets missed here is that part of the work for entrepreneur like an athlete is like your health and your personal relationships. If those aren't in a good spot, you're not Operating hundred percent efficiency is so that's part of the work, right? What not part of the work is maybe party in or doing things that you shouldn't be doing um that are onna set you further back.

But people think about. Know if I say work life baLances is a joke. People like, oh, what about your health? Health is included in the work um anything is such an important part of IT to 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 be sharper, more alert, physically and mentally fit is is going to do so. So much benefit for especially as the business growth to 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.

Like he said, told the odds in your favor. I've never really understood this concept of baLance. The baLance implies that you're perfectly equal in these things into, I wish, think of this is like a moza.

You have a border and you have different size pieces. And some of those pieces are family, some are work. Summer, maybe your hobbies.

H health is definitely one of the big pieces there. And they shrink and they sort of like, but they can never go away. Sometimes works gonna more.

Our priority sometimes is not sometimes your families going to take over. So these the pieces expand that they can never really go to zero. And health is like, so foundation for all of these, but we get busy.

The first thing we do is like what do we do? We skip lunch or we get a really rapid launch. We stopped working out, we stopped sleeping really well. And we think we tell ourselves that will just make up for IT later. And when we start making worse, worse decisions where cranky were here able, and I just compounds negatives.

I was ensure destruction, right? So 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 I just casady into a two years event, which i'm sure could have been much short um and I just treat much more like an athlete. And if you're injured, red, you're going to recovery protocol. So you're dealing with the high stressed event business.

What you recovery protocol, what 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 actually three hours that me sometimes you need to step late. You know there are late. Nice because i'm literally email change with my lawyers for dealing with stuff. But like that's not every night and that's not super comment and you can you know moderate that stuff. Letting your health go is is kind of the worst strategy I found, honestly, because getting through those times is down the resilience, perseverance. And if you let your health go, and when I did like that, when you know very really, have I ever felt like I couldn't do something when my health was in a poor spot about two years ago, going through the thick of IT, that was one time 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 try this business to feel Better because i'm just so sick t now and I just don't want to do IT anymore that was the only period doesn't when my health laughs like, oh.

was that the lossy?

That was the the season ist that LED to our ultimate rebrand yeah, that was like the .

first walk me through that .

were five years in the business Operating under a former name. And it's going really well. It's twenty twenty one.

Our business that previous year grew one hundred and thirty five percent year a year, and we were already growing in average one hundred percent year over year. So was just up into the right. I was physically feeling good.

I was fit. I like randa a half marathon or that you're like, everything was great. Ah it's the year, I think, women and I was raising. We pushed up the business from the start, and I I said I started to build a network and at this opportunity rose to to raise the money that not only there is 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 power behind what we want to invest in, and then also inviting in some voices that I was so desperate of people admire. So was kind of this Operator, or telling, you know, a bunch of friends and in my wife being like, you will never get this, like all my business heroes, I want to give me money and investment the company like this seems almost like cheating this, this is incredible. So I passed an opportunity, but literally the day the money had, the account we raised, you know, millions of dollars has the account I get an email from my lawyer has urgent in the subject line and that's just almost never a good thing.

And it's from my I P. Attorney, which I bear I rarely hear from. IT was our first ever season assists and IT, they said, you know, there's a company that believes they have rights over your name and is demanding that you do X, Z, M, one of those to stop using the name.

And so I was kind of like, immediately just shock because we just raise all this money. We've been in business for five years, and that was the first time now in sport in 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. I was completely out of control on.

And I had no frame for IT. I had never gone through before. I didn't know anyone that went through IT for maybe half an hours. Like this is death blow no like I was kind of like let myself I ve called you actually I call a few other people as okay like this is not uncommon um but IT was incredibly stressed.

What basically let us under the six months s journey of rebranding and changing our name and that's an incredibly complex process for business has been around for five years. And how do you even start that processes you know communicating the messaging and what is a name that's going to work? And the stress, I think, ultimately, 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 in on myself because I told you I take this responsibility is incredibly seriously someone gives you money about some me like I said, like it's my duty to do right um and so I wasn't gonna not put a hundred and ten percent effort into IT and I had to learn. So I basically over like over the the next six months became quite educated on on IP law and figuring out kind of everything in working with the 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 can just pick a name that that I liked in, yeah, we filed tradeMarks. We do all the right things. I didn't do any diligence to see if the rather brands using similar names.

And so this time round, I had to be like, what's a brand name that could champion a business going forward? We've been in business for five years. People know about us.

It's not a massive business but is growing. And what's one is protective. And you've got a time like you ve got a personal change your name by this data, we're going to see you. And it's just like, so you ve got a gunn to your head and you've got this huge list of things and you do accomplish and he was incredibly daunting and and this was, you know the one time, uh, like I 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 I didn't have a cofounder and Operating partner that levels like it's me on email chain with all the attention is understanding all the complexities of IT and then figuring out how going to go down this process. And yeah, I was ultimately the stress of that. And but like I said now, kind of a few years removed and incredibly thankful for that period.

I just like learned so much like the biot of micro founder, that was kind of what I coin is like one hundred, and was my B. A. I learned so much in that process round.

What is a short argument? What's the importance of IT like around coder dynamics and values and BIOS in the way we had to do thing? I learned so much at that period. This was now another learning opportunity of like, okay, we're we're Operating a different league now we're like, this is a thing and people you have to play a little bit of defense.

People are going to throw like shoe errors at you, you know and as that was an arrow and ultimately I let the second arrow hit me, which was my reaction, you have the first, which can control. The second error is like how you deal with IT. And I forget what i'm up from, but someone says that I love to exit, like you can choose not to keep about the second era.

And I chose to kind of like not do the right things that was taking care of myself. I give myself Grace now because I didn't know any Better. I don't have protocols, bill.

I didn't know I was going to get burned out because similar worklife baLance, I believe, burn. Notice the results of working long time. Uh, A A lot of things you that don't fill your cup that are out of line with your missions is not from overworking.

The common thing is like if you work eighty hours a week are gonna burn. It's not true. I can work eighty hours a hundred hours. We can think I love and feel very energize and excited. And you're obsessed with IT.

But working that eighty hours on this legal stuff, and which was completely counter to what I wanted to do in our mission that was in such a destruction and a sideshow and draining IT, was incredibly draining the stress, the anxiety and smile. right? Because it's just like if I think back, it's there's so many incredible stories and it's 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 out way.

So more product than we did ever is our old name. But like just. Yeah was incredibly difficult.

IT was to show you that like as you get more successful, you start to attract attention. And a lot of people like to compete with lawyers and set a product that's the losing .

minds that those people that are doing that are like Operating from a place of fear and they are playing more the office. That's not how I like Operate. I much more of a friend in business kind of guy think like business is not a zero.

So I think everyone can win the markets or master, especially in the socks space of fifty billion dollar market. But yeah, we went from no, no legal issues to three in one year. So I wasn't just that one.

I got like within the next six months, got two others around completely unrelated things as well. And just like IT was almost comical, you know it's just like kick me I was down and but I learned how to deal with those things. We resolved all of them. Um but yeah, it's it's it's something you just kind of .

have to go through. What went into the decision to rebuild instead of fight?

So every bone of 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 goals 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 everyone else is well and think through what how does this affect not just me, but everyone involved, like I mentioned, and there was just a lot of discussions you first to started with, like if we do to, what's that look like? The quotes I got, they could take you two years per country. You fight this in and up to a million dollars. There's the financial, and then there's the brain drain of doing that. And so you weigh out against what are the financial and other implications of changing the name.

And ultimately, you know what I landed on this this understanding of what our brand is, which is why this whole process was incredibly rewarding, is got to really dig to like, why do people buy a product if we were a brand like a luxury brand, where we are trading on our name as a big piece of the value? This was gna be a big problem, but we were a 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 where I thought about IT was like, I broke brand down in the kind of three core components. And I like to use kind of like analogies to help visualize things.

So visualized a brand as a human and will 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 to call you and talk you about other people. But if you came to me and said, you know, now my name is dave, there would be like a little way to take some adJusting.

But like that doesn't change who you are. Whatever, no problem. We can figure that out. How you look, if suddenly you came and had shorter length hair somehow. And yeah and and change how you look and look completely different IT would take some getting used to to how to recognize you, but ultimately you'd be the same person.

And I was still want to hang out with you if you came look the same at the same name but were a completely different person and our interaction to be different, I would question whether or not you were the same person, where as you changing your name or how you look doesn't change who you are. Brand is ultimately how you make someone feel and is the essence of the company. Understanding that gave me a lot of kind of like a much more kind of positive path for of realizing that 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 are 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 never took 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 our people, reference us and thankfully, we uh people don't buy our product because we put our name on IT. Our name is the way that we're referenced in the world for the most part, and there is good.

Well, there's not to say that the name is not important. IT is incredibly important, which is why we took so much time to figure a new one, one 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.

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 what people I never heard of us because they will know our current name from a home, the wall.

So it's like OK. That also makes IT a little less daunting is like we have a community of customers here that nobody we know how to reach them, and we're gna be very authentic. So we actually ended up creating a little youtube series where I walked people brought them along on the rebranding process as like here's what we're doing.

We interviewed like hundreds of people of our customers, mainly 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 change, that was almost a part of the ego ee attach like I made.

This thing is mine. That's where that kind of like left, which I think that was really a good thing. Like this is our brand. Now this is the customer's brand, this is the team's brand. We're all building this, and I think that's really important for an let go of that.

My mine mine um because you need to be able to delegate, you need to be able to bring in people that Better than you. You need to realize that your job is Young pret, the founder is to really get the thing going. And and if you're the persons scale IT do that as well.

But you need to build the system around you. And so that was also A A really unique time as 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 is like up to that period, we were, and we were a caterpillar in the first five years, and we went in the cocoon and emerged.

The butterfly is like, you call IT our butterfly moment. And, you know, although, like we look different or 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 was like was kind of this like beautiful little way. I I made myself feel Better explain 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 unfortunately situation hold us backer propellers forward.

And so we went through the demand and of like how do we actually use this is a spring board. How do we bring the community along for us, walked through this and make them feel involved. And like their voice was heard and and up.

working IT really well for us. I spect have a lot more legal chAllenges as you go from eight figures to nine to hopefully ten um as you get more and more attention.

i'd dinner us. I think David said this too is like, you know you're not a relentless ly get a legal letter right 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 that happens to you feel like you're the only one in the world this is happening to and it's very lonely, especially we don't have a network.

If you don't make that work in particular, I can be very scary. I lot thankfully that time I people to be like all this happening like a no big deal like you know, you're OK and I feel feel good good to be that voice. I could see them kind of like starting the wheels.

We're starting to turn and start get stressed us like this. Just trust me as in your position, like you will be OK, but you need to do this. You need like take care yourself and kind of walk and through what we did.

Ultimately, if we can share those lessons, I think they're so important. I welcome the chAllenges. I am happy to be in a period of like smooth water right now.

Um but you ultimately like the chAllenges, like I said, are how we grow and up. You're right. These are just as part of business is like people are shoot narrow, you're onna get head. 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 for us.

Or now when we ve got the each subsequent legal letter, that initial shock impact and how I do, if that was was Better and improved the law, how I manage those things in, and that's ultimately the goals. How how can you build that resilience and how can you build the teams? And we got incredibly great, you know attn is now and and processes for when these things happen, you only build those are the first time that happening, right? Like no no one's building up an I P atterley team whole process around I P infringement. If you don't have issues there.

I can say things you can but like some of the stuff that people are claiming is just like absolutely ridiculous like I shouldn't be granted that this has no so of intellectually property right whatsoever yeah and i'm intentionally .

haven't to be quite vag and not even mentioning what our previous name is because that this in these agreements of like what I can cannot say, but you're write, is the unfortunately thing about I P law in IT is IT almost exclusively Operates in the grey area, right in in trademark infringement ment. In particular, what they're looking for us with the non observe and consumer.

In other words, a person who knows nothing, who's not paying attention, would they be confused? Between one brand. And now that I 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, the battle accounts at the battle of time, like how much time we will spend? Like I said, I was like much more than a million dollars. IT was the two years, the two years with no certainty.

So it's like that's too much of a looming, you know, too big of arrest, too big of arrest. Can general these things are without their prey baseless? But IT a, there are usually bigger companies with fire power .

want to come back to the, or baLance a with two Young kids. Uh, rapidly growing business. What do we've learned about using your time effectively.

as I do? Of all right, i've been in a few I want a few different hat to the different scale of our business. And like as A A founder, you start day one doing everything and as the business of all of you start to hire people, but you're still doing a lot of things in your micromanaging. You you I am done this before, so I do all of the mistakes and you you're overriding things and and you don't know any Better. But eventually you start to learn, like I mention, with kind of how we evolved after the rebrand, like you've got to bring in Better people than you understand.

How are you best applied, right? How are you the most effective in your job? And how I managed 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, you don't have a lot of feedback.

As a founder, when you have a boss, you get a feedback, you know if you hit Marks or not. And you know we have investors and stuff, but our investors are also like entrepreneurs and their Grace. They're not exactly kind of uh keeping tabs s uh as much as like a boss wood, for example.

And so you have to one hold d yourselves to account and figure what that looks like. Uh and for me, I have to reinvent that as like work today is not what I used to be, is not hands on the tools as much. It's not overriding decisions.

It's not getting two into the weeds, is not losing touch. I still have uh a very uh, firm kind of finger on the pulse of the business. I have a lot of consumer fee back cent directed to my inbox.

I want to know what's going on at that level. But IT means not getting involved in the weeds and and kind of doing those jobs. And so work for me is how do I like the most ic? How do I holistically make sure i'm in the best mindset to have a good idea? I say, my, my jobs are really have a good idea once a quarter, like a really good idea. And in those ideas, move the needle of quite centrally, 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, months to months of my job is to be looking six to twelve months out and then further, but typically six to twelve months because I think beyond that your guessing in six to eight eight months we can make a pretty good idea where we need to be going um and ultimately, it's to have those good idea. 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. Now there's a reading even just like the this is publicly traded companies in our space reading the reports, how are the C E. O thinking? You know, how's the market looking at these businesses and what are they saying? It's networking with people extract insight call like almost like engineers, certain that business.

Well, I have you put yourself in a bunch of different situations to just extract an idea. How can you go? Idea harvesting.

I look at that is my job basically go out there and collect to the information, come back and sensitize that and apply IT in which way makes the most sense for our business. And of course, like that. Not all.

All I do, I would love to that. All I do, but I get pulled. The in a business problems follow up pill.

And so there's still those things. But thankfully, i've got incredible people that kind of had those off now as well. And my area of excEllence 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 IT. But the lack of dress'll also comes from taking care of myself.

And so it's been tough though. I redefine work is that because IT doesn't look like sitting in front of computer, doesn't look like nine to five. And so I had battle this like in my working hard enough.

And I was this this realization that, like, oh, i'm out of the death cripp phase does no longer serving me. I can't just sit down and death grip of good idea. I have to sit there with A, A, A google dog can be like, good idea.

Time does not how works anymore. My, my, my work is twenty four, seven. The IT could be something my wife says like she's incredibly smart. Like SHE gives me tons of ideas. She's the real cofounder in the business, right, like as early days who might go over everything with, like her level of business knowledge would be higher than, you know, people going with M, B, A, like SHE seen at all, talking to her about things, walking through problems, talking to everyone, 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 with insight that comes out of that as well? Another way, look at the most exsel ons, right, the seasons where you need to be easier. 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 gonna kind of all in what to say, what season we and how do we adapt to that and make sure that we're Operating at the best of our ability and 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 to do more is just the common the common path people go down there are like OK. I've got some level of success. How do I replicate that by doing more? So like, for example, we can should you sell underwear, what people fail to realize there is have you fully maximize the opportunity that's in front of you?

I an really optimized. 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 can catch another race going on.

You're like, oh, that looks fun and you hope the berry and you're and that but now your middle and back of the pack, you prepare for that race. You don't really know the landscape. Oh, and you you're now falling behind in the race.

You are running because you even built the infrastructure to maybe have another teammate that could run that racing train for would be like hiring or developing different line of business. But I got a lot of entrepreneurs do if I try to run multiple races, and that's like a short fire way to burn yourself out and also does not give the attention and focus to what really matters. Were taught that like to get more, you have to do more.

I just don't think that's true. I think to get more, you should be doing less, typically should be subtracting. So going into this year, we are very clear on our goal, almost like a bit of an insecurity.

We are china with the two is like our socks enough, you know? Is that a big enough goal? But outside of my own ego is like, why aren't socks enough? right? It's a like it's a fifty billion dollar of industry, were a leader in IT, and we're doing really well and were of that market size were just scratching the surface.

If you would even say that right, is a massive market, is what I would go back to is like we've barely maximize the opportunity here. We're at the start line still. Why would we do anything else? And we love doing this. I think that level of focus empowers you.

Do like really become an expert out 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 has 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 excelling.

You know, like why are we doing this other than and wasn't really a those past were never something else. Like this is what we need to do, like the conviction to have around socks. IT was advice or or or grasping for growth are trying to figure that out.

And I think like in anything in life, like focus is so incredibly important and businesses also just so hard like life, this just always things coming at you being able to simplify what you're doing. You're dated to deal with those coming in, like I said earlier word, we now, of course, to love problems, but our ability to deal those problems is incredible, right? Because we're not so underwater with everything we're trying to do.

We're just so ready to deal with what's ever coming that way. I think the focus and and just the mental clarity around IT and being OK with socks, you know, which is this sounds funny out I say IT, but just being okay with that is is so important. It's a it's just unlocked this level of like a love of what we're doing.

Again, when IT comes to design, how do you go about anticipating what .

people want to become more data? Then in the early days, I designed what I like, of course, and Young entrepreneurs are people starting their first business. They have solutions looking for problems.

So like, so they teach in business school, like come up with a solution and go try and find the problem where you should be solving problems, right? You should be looking for in, particularly if it's your first business, you should be solving a problem you deal with because. Otherwise, why are you qualify to do that? It's like I said early, 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 are gona like these designs as well as that was the simple start.

Not trying to guess what people wanted. I was really trying to dissolve my own problem. That's evolve now to having core category 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 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 to, as we found that designs act is a certain level of inspiration for people is one of the first piece of clothing you put on the morning. And what I would do with socks is I would lay them out like how i'm feeling that day, is what the kind of design I would use.

And I heard that from customers and friends as well as, 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 you is like in our product.

Be this thing you put on in the morning that inspires is 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 we do at a brand level. We don't really care if you get to the finish line first, we want to make get to the start line, you try and set a goal and you actually go forward to think that is so important to move forward and and kind remove the outcome. But like really focus on getting started.

And yes, so ultimately, like the designs follow that kind of pathway and and we were trying to inspire people, but also just give them what we know they like, our best selling stuff and what we will buy the most ever, just really basic stuff. And I kind of evolved into wearing more basic designs, more both wearing basic, that's the season i'm in is more baseball. I got like more of retro inspired kind of design going on, which I really like right now.

But have the designs are just this fantastic way people express? I love seeing what our customers, how how they kind of move through the world with the moon. And I love to ask them, well, 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 insight and data and just you should the wall too like i'll have an idea, you know, like, of course, like found as an idea for some stupid will try, and typically not.

Well, one thing I have had to get Better at is not letting my preference 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.

That is no longer the million or so people that are like me. It's it's much bigger than and so that was chAllenging because like IT is your business and you ultimately kind of wanted to be in line with what you like. But again, if IT replace into that, like that needs to evolve to be much more than you because I don't like, for example, one of our best on designs right now is a cat.

And I don't like cats. So just like secretly, i'm like, I don't want to see to do so well about the same time, i'm like, hey, people love IT, you know and like cool power to them too. People like cats I I import getting out of my own rezin down, just hiring good people in general slack.

You hire them because they're Better than you slike. So guide them and have your inputs. But you know, make sure you ultimately let them bring for something that is Better than what you've ve done as well.

What if you learned about taking big swings?

I think IT comes to like why are you taking that swings of taking big swings that were authentic? And they like the big goals, like even just starting the business, they are 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 are going to come in and be able to solve all your problems.

Just choosing a cofounder because you think more fun like these are just never a good to kind of take big swings because you're relying on hope and that hopes just generally a bad strategy. The big swings i've taken where they weren't in line without my authentically ity and kind of why we're doing them like like I talked about really like that personal mission and drive of why are you doing what you're doing like, like that was going to take you through the hard time that's going to make you. And Jerry, and if you going to take the big swing, you've gotto know it's going to come with a lot of turmoil.

It's gonna 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 one hundred people, and i'm explaining my rational now for taking a big swing. And I like to imagine that, like, I need to do a good enough job at the majority.

The people be like, that makes sense, at least let's rational why you want to do that. So I try to take myself out, metaphorically, put myself into a room, and be like, would the would most people agree with this? And then the second question like to ask is like, and would would I be happy with the decision in five years? So I like to extend the time.

Why is not on that? 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 doing hard things that work out for you is that you get lucky. So I got incredibly lucky.

My first few higher who are still with us um and they've scaled and grow 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 a fairly rapidly because we started growing pretty quickly. And and honestly, I just was not experiences enough to to really do that properly.

And you know, hiring for what I would say now, probably the wrong reasons. Hiring for org chart, not really what needs to be executed um hiring and ways because that's just how it's been done because I was just trying to like a look around where and I never done this before, not really questioning if we should be hiring or contracting, right? So a lot of hiring happens because there's just a lot of inefficiency org ization.

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 a half the size we are now, we had twice as many people as we do now, which is crazy because we were just so efficient.

I really I didn't understand the concept of attraction and how we could build efficiently. The biggest hiring mistake I made was thinking, like, you know, going to a second year of not hitting the growth goals like I array said, ego really tached to IT like we need to do Better. We kind of keep the good times rolling or covet was this big inflationary period for e commerce businesses and trafficking for businesses like everyone started to shop online at this huge boom and the market start to draw down really hard.

And so you are trying to to find growth and exceptional growth in a market that's going down is it's very chAllenging. But I was kind of hard head about IT, and it's like surely we just need experience person to come in and lead marketing iran. A good process in terms of diligences ing 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 comparing. Contrast them again. I was able to tell me exactly what I wanted to hear. I got good reference, you know, all the typical things yeah all to me the less and learn there was like, I need to actually take what they're saying compared to other people as well. And so I took a big swing that was this is one of those big swing I took that wasn't authentic IT was like, I was trying to something.

try to force something.

in short, the time horizon. And I just went incredibly wrong. You know, IT turns out they were not exactly truth full about their experience, like they weren't as at the jobs and and where they were working other jobs during hours.

IT was a remote. They were not based in the U. S. Were here in canada. I got played IT felt like almost violating because IT was just like, totally like I never dealt with that before.

If I was just just I was very word IT didn't only work IT caused a lot of internal conflict as well because like I was a big or shift the guy currently how running marketing was now replaced with this this expert and that, you know, wasn't a great move on my part as well. And that was kind of the last straw. You know, like last year, many years where we kind of like that didn't work out.

That's where I just like wiped the table cleaner said, like here's everything we're not doing anymore because we're just going to strip this stand in some track and rebuild because 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 in fulfilling our mission, we're just like we're not even listened, but they cost anymore, right? We're doing things try to chase growth and that chasing growth will well as a consequence force you start doing things that you know aren't inherently good for your brander.

You're going to new categories. Makes sense to change messaging that out of line with why your customers are there in the first place. And so again, as painful as that higher wasn't getting that wrong. IT was just kind of the last drave like another lesson learned for sure, but last job like now I need to rethink how we're doing everything .

right now and the internal am, yeah.

I was july of twenty, twenty three. Like this is where we're resetting, and that's really like the successful seeing now is the result to the 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 form momentum of doing the right thing that are now all working.

And so people you can ask me now is like what are you doing that leading to your growth this year? I couldn't really answer that question because IT would be, well, here is how much time do we have, right? We going to eight hour pog just because there's literally a thousand. And things we did that started with the traction IT goes much deeper er than that IT goes IT goes you know into everything that we do. And it's been so fAiling 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 I did previously like the tough times .

I remember we want for a walk july last year, we we're talking about bill washes booked 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 I could force my classmates to buy a pair. I can go force people to buy socks now.

And I think like it's not going to move the needle if you're knocking indoors.

exactly. I may be a little bit yeah, not not, not where we needed to. I am not sure to still get out there and hand hand combat. I will do IT. If you're focused on the work and you're focused on the filling the promise you have your customers like, the results will come if you if you do a good product and you market IT well, the golf us. Is socks on feed.

The product is so damn good, I want to get more socks on feet because then people will come back to how do we do that effectively? The same true of sport, right? Like every time I got to the start line to race, like anything could go wrong, I think i'm gonna win.

Focus too much on the result you lose side of. Everything else is 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 these people are there.

We like, we don't have goals. I think goals are still important. And I think goals are incredibly important. You star, but that's how we think about goals. Much more of an an north star than like we need to hit this like because those are fairly arbitrary, know we are not public company, you know we're not having to like during reports that are going to move our stock Prices 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 twenty years, we've got a pretty damn good business.

I was saying with the kids, which is the lack of patients, changes their come. There's a natural pace to a lot of things, and we get into a lot of trouble when we .

try to I agree, the whole hardest 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 to look like. I always try to be cautious of of telling people like I don't try the hacks just focus on a long term.

Sometimes you need to try things and you need to like touch the stove once or twice. Generally speaking, if you prioritize the long term and do good businesses, going to work well and life like even with um just health and that takes so long, you know it's like you actually want to build a resilient body and healthy body like you just that takes time saying with the business and sport. And it's just like be kind to yourself, I found so like you don't need IT all right now. You know you just like one foot in front of the other study progress.

You through a process recently to learn not to care much about about what other people think about you or what you're doing.

I got to have this current fear, or like I got to a certain level in my cycle reer 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 have been winning being the best, the world. But I never got there one year old, number one in canada.

But like I didn't I don't feel like I can. I had unfinished business there before. I I just didn't reach the top.

And looking back there, a lot of things I wish I did differently. And I was looking here like, I don't want that to happen again. So I trying to search for, like, what am I not doing?

What have I never done before that I should be doing to try and chAllenge myself and grow? So I actually texted the metro front of ours and real considers like here's kind of what i'm going through. I didn't know IT was therapy I needed to do. I didn't know that was a business coach like 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 wanna make from doing everything I can.

And he mentioned this guy, jack skin, who does this road map process where under IT done IT and a few other people, the business dia done IT is this kind of extensive process where you work with jack and you do some clinical kind of like psychology test 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 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 you know what your superpower is. And I don'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 apartment, 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 any do what are and need to achieve them? 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 inside of, just like I wasn't living authentically, you know, and I was kind of limited by the belief of others, and I never really struggled with caring what people think unless I like, admire them, or are I care about the opinion? And I is important to like prioritize what people you care about think, but that can't limit you and IT IT can't change. You know, what you feel is right and what you need to do as well.

And going through that process and in building the um the systems and kind of building the understanding, how do you do? Like one thing I did daily is I all kind of like do some journal um and I just started asking myself everyday, when did I not say or due what I was really thinking or feeling because I didn't want to moderate myself anymore as something to be rude. But it's not to like if if having a uh a conversation and I disagree like I like me, we're willing to say that because I don't want have a fear of thinking that the other person of the tables is going to not like any more because I disagree is like, is that a good friendship anyways?

IT sounds obvious, but a lot of people Operate that way, right? Is very natural to like want to fit in and and want to kind of be accepted and so can be a bit scared. I kind of like be really authentic and .

IT causes a resentment if you're holding that in what totally yet.

it's exhAusting, right? Because you're actually not living your yourself. You you're like a celine.

And that's where a lot of people who think there may be introverted, I think, are actually limiting a lot. They're just kind of molding to the environment. That's why there's so exhausted after just around the wrong people.

They are not being authentic. So they learning like strategies on how not to care is a lot easier said than done. But asking myself that question and kind of like knowing be accountable to that allows me to be more authentic because like, I don't want to answer that question.

Here's where I moderates myself and happy you say like I only like once in a couple months how to like answer that question and and and not be like I moderate myself here um it's just a fear like a public speaking. I didn't want to get up and talk like like I don't know, I care what people thought reason that kind of affected me. I would side of not caring what people think the the real kind of unlocked there was as a superpower.

And like I came down that you know like my love and appreciation for socks and the utility and how they can improve what I see there and learning how black that can be enough, you know like learning that um I would like I spending earlier insecure about socks being and I I do not feel i'm in a spot where I know a lot about business of a lot of experience. I I had this this acts of like, are socks the best utilization of these skills that i've built? And I kind of mention that to jack is like, well, that kind of silly like if you are doing shoes, would that be enough? What what? Tennis rackets and I like, oh, i've never thought about IT that way.

I like, you know, nike is a great business, right? There was shoes for such a long time as, like, no one ever was like, that's a lame. But as like socks as like mentioned a couple times, the big market is like why isn't this enough? Why in my head or socks you know not as good as shoes or rackets or some tech thing is like.

IT was just this kind of like self imposed sort of limiter of, like I don't know of like, I guess, Carry people think because I don't have a Better idea right now. And I really love what I do. So was really helpful. Understand that because I like I said, that helped me.

I was really falling back in love with kind of the process but was like IT almost allowed me to kind of like fully commit to IT again and be like, I don't know socks, you are enough until the next idea comes I kind of chAllenge this was like, oh, I did all this work like socks for my superpower and is like, no, they are right now, your ability to like take a product and see how that can be improved is your super power. But you don't have another product in minor right now. He's like that will come and you'll know when I come like he's like be OK with where you are.

And that's been a kind of thing 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 under 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 roses.

A good example of this is when I was cycling, I got to travel the world and see all these incredible places. I was so intense and so focused that I would not enjoy anywhere I be in spain or italy, and I would be so tunnel vision that I didn't even give my time myself, time to, like, appreciate where I was. I always told myself i'll be back, all appreciated later.

I haven't been back, right, like IT IT just ended. And I look back, i'm like, I think I would be a lot more of fulfilled if like actually just smell the roses, right? Because like the results are one thing, but like the experiences and the opportunity, still they 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 for fAiling to be like we're in IT.

One of my favorite quotes of my favor shows the office and selling the final episode and andy says, uh, is kind of reminisce is like, um I wish someone told us we were in the good times in the good old days, right is like they're looking back and you're like, I wish they would tell you before I ended and i'm going to get goose bumps talking about is like, I mean, the good old days right now, right? Like I know when this business over tough as IT is or whatever going through, even like raising Young children, I sure remind myself like these are the good old days like another. This thing I read was like, you know, like, you can be hard to take a dog, 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 just being happy, contended but also still inner striving for? Or maybe there's a title of a book by David so co, which I like, which is pleased but not satisfying. And it's sort of like you can be happy where you're at. You can still .

drive for more. I'm incredibly happy this year and like and i've been you know strugling with like people ask like what you are bigger chAllenge right now and i'm like or what your biggest problem i'm like, I feel like I ve spent two years fighting problems that like i'm in kind of like a solution phase right now.

On one hand, hyper ambitious, from their other hand, content extend is almost like counter too ambitious, right? And 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.

But this 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 not it's not like, yeah, i'm in a place now that incredibly hard to even imagine ten years ago, but they're still so much more. I want to go and but i'm not driven and I ever was driven.

I guess why I go back to sport is like the ultimate motivator when I said everything's earned, not old. The goal starting my business was never financially driven. He was this deep desire to accomplish something.

And that hasn't gone away, you know, that won't go away. And so there's no level of income where that's going kind of leave me. And so IT comes down to like, how are you resilient and why you do you're doing is that personal mission of.

like why are you doing? And in being authentic and is a great way to the question we always end with, which is what is success for you.

This changes over time because my life changed so much of 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 three Young entrepreneurs to like I do a lot of work with the local schools. And I I try to share these licenses on different platforms to because like I don't have anyone to go to know like I didn't have that our 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 all like I want to be that voice that says you'll be OK right? And I think success looks like being about 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 to sharing the lessons, you know, that would be that be success. The kids grow up and turn a good spot. I like to 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 successful and that would be winning.

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