#551: TOMS Founder Blake Mycoskie — Fear{less} with Tim Ferriss

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Optimal minimal. At this altitude I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Can I answer your personal question? Now we're just seeing it.

My cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal and those galaxy. Hello, boys and girls, this is Tim Ferris. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris show, where it is my job to deconstruct world class performers to tease out the routines, habits, et cetera, that you can apply to your own life. You will get plenty of all of that in this special episode, which features an interview from my 2017 TV show, Fearless. The less is in parentheses because the objective is to teach you to fear less Not to be fearless. Fearless features in-depth long form conversations with top performers focusing on how they've overcome fears and made hard decisions, embracing discomfort and thinking big along the way. It was produced by Wild West Productions, and I worked with them to make both the video and audio available to you for free. My dear listeners, so thank you, Wild West. You can find the video of this episode, which is gorgeous. I think they did an incredible job on youtube dot com slash Tim Ferris. Remember two R's two S, youtube.com slash Tim Ferris, and eventually you'll be able to see all of the episodes for free at youtube dot com slash Tim Ferris. So

You can swing over there and see what is currently up. Before we get started, just a little bit more on Wild West. Spearheaded by actor, producer, and past podcast guest Vin Vaughn, Wild West has produced a string of hit movies, including The Internship, Couples Retreat, Four Christmases, and The Breakup. In twenty twenty, Wild West produced the comedy The Opening Act. Stirring. Jimmy O'Yoang and Cedric the Entertainer. In addition to Fearless, their television credits include Undeniable with Joe Buck, ESPN's 30 for thirty episode about the eighty-five bears, and the Netflix animated show F Is for Family. Wild West has also produced the documentaries Give Us This Day, Game Changers. Subtitle Dreams of BlizzCon and Wild West Comedy Show. And now, without further ado

Please enjoy. This wide ranging conversation from fearless. I'm Tim Ferris, author, entrepreneur, angel investor, and now TV host. I've spent my entire adult life asking questions, then scouring the globe to find the answers. On this show, I'll share the secrets of pioneers who have faced their own fears. We'll dig into the hard times, big mistakes,

tough decisions, and how they got through it all. The goal isn't to be fearless, the goal is to learn to fear less. Welcome to Fearless, I'm your host Tim Ferris. And on this stage, we'll be deconstructing world-class performers of all different types to uncover the specific tactics and strategies they've used to overcome doubt.

tackle their hardest decisions and ultimately succeed on their own terms. My show of hands. How many of you guys own a few pairs shoes? That is everybody in the room. How many of you own around 10 pairs?

Oh she is. All right. More than half. How many of you do not own a single pair of shoes? Alright, that's a big fat zero. My guest tonight has built a company that's given away more than 60 million pairs shoes to those who need them most.

During a trip to South America, he recognized a unique opportunity to blend business and philanthropy. Since its founding, Toms has given away millions of shoes helped destroy eyesight. and provided safe drinking water to those in need. Across the globe. So ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the stage the founder of Tom's.

Blake Mike Kosky.

It's been a few years, man. So Blake and I met quite a while back and we'll get to sort of the origin stories of all that, but I thought what we could do is take a look at one of the ways that I was not necessarily introduced to, but reacquainted with Tom. So we have a video that we're gonna start with. Okay, great.

It's incredible to think that five years ago, what has now become a global event. Started with a simple idea on a college campus. I'm going without shoes so I can know what millions of children go through every day. really realise what a luxury we have to have shoes on our feet all day, but uh it's actually kind of painful. Well

There are a few reasons. The first is that clearly I think it puts in perspective as one event. The good that Blake and his company and all the people involved done. Number two. This is a master of positioning and PR and events and a lot in between. And we're gonna come back to that and take a look at how it all came to be.

The apple doesn't seem to fall too far from the tree. Butterbusters. Yeah. Let's talk about butterbusters. This is going somewhere, bear with me. What is butterbusters? So Butterbusters is a Cookbook my mom uh wrote

on a word processor. In like nineteen ninety three, uh literally in our kitchen, they went on to sell millions and millions of copies. Um and it was this crazy experience for me being fifteen years old. Seeing my mom.

Who is uh You know, they you know married to my dad, he was the doctor, he was the breadwinner, all this. The next thing you know, she's getting, you know, royalty checks for millions of dollars in the mail because she wrote a book, mainly because she wanted to help people lose weight and uh keep their cholesterol down. Because she had high cholesterol. She had high cholesterol. And so she basically the story was she went to the doctor And came home and had high cholesterol. and uh the doctor suggested her cutting some of the fat out of her diet.

And uh and so she started doing that and she started losing weight as well. And um she wanted to just share what she learned with others. And I think I learned two things from that. at that very impressionable age I saw like my mom had an idea that could help people and she acted on it, even though she had never written a thing in her life. you know, didn't graduate from college, like it w you know, just just did it and she didn't think about it, she just acted. And the second thing was is that like you can start something from nothing

and and a fortune can be made out of out of literally your kitchen in a typewriter. So and did she go to A bunch of New York publishers and they had a auction and one of them bought the book or how did you think Yeah, I mean you'll appreciate this with your story. Uh You know, she um She felt so connected to helping people and and really reaching people directly that she didn't even go down the publishing route. She self published it and uh actually the first time that she published it the publisher was uh kind of a crook and and her my dad lost like fifty thousand dollars which is a ton of money to our family back then. And um

And so she got a loan from the bank to publish it again the second time and and she started selling them literally out of our garage and her big break was she l landed the uh Sam's Club, part of Walmart. And uh and next thing you know, she was selling hundreds of thousands of copies and we had to get a little warehouse. next to our house and we were self and which turned out to be a great business thing because she sold over a million copies before she had it published. So I mean. So Yeah.

I think it's I had no idea that's where we're gonna start. this conversation, but I I think it's actually a wonderful place to start because it's so many people after you have had some success as an entrepreneur asked you, you know, where did it come from? You know, where did the drive come from? And for me, you know, the drive came more from my athletic background and and all the lessons I learned trying to be a professional tennis player, but the understanding of creating something from nothing and doing it to help people clearly came from me

seeing this experience at age fifteen to eighteen, uh you know, with my mom. Let's talk about SMU. Okay. I was only there for eighteen months so right, so we we we won't uh spend uh uh too much time on it, but you chose Philosophy? Is that right? Yeah. Well I started because

Um I originally majored in archaeology because my goal is to become Indiana Jones. That was that was my career path. No, I mean it's like I was never really that into school. I was a tennis player, I was a thing. But I thought okay, if I don't become a professional tennis player, what would I want to do with my life? And I was like, I think Gene Jones is the best job. So what did he study? Study archaeology. But no one told me until I so I say for I set up all archaeology classes freshman year.

And I'm in these classes and they're they're more like chemistry. I mean we're studying like the compounds of rocks and this I mean it's like boring stuff in the world. So I was like No whips. Yeah, no whips. No talk about like tribes and and and cannibals and all the stuff I was excited about getting into. And um Or learning how to stay away from. And uh But but so I dropped out of the archaeology classes because they were it was like watching paint dry. Um And I thought okay, so what else You know, could I

Could it be interesting. But part of my fascination, I think, with Indiana Jones and this idea of traveling the world and discovering, you know, people and and and and ancient ruins and all this stuff also came with this idea of understanding like world religions and how we got you know, why some people think this way and other people think that way. And so then that led to okay philosophy could be a great place to to really dig into from an academic standpoint and learn why people think different things, how, you know, how We've evolved as human beings. And and so that was and I found once I got in the philosophy classes I actually really loved them because they were pretty quickly into stuff that I felt like was relatable uh to my experience as a human. And uh and so I I I really uh enjoyed philosophy. To this day when I have time for free reading, I read A lot of philosophy.

Any favorite? philosophers or books on philosophy. Descartes I like a lot. I would say is one of my favorites. Plato, Aristotle, I mean kinda the classics are the I mean they they've they've been classics for hundreds of years for a reason. Right. And so I feel like you can find You know, you can you can read some Aristotle. And it's literally like as relevant as as an as another book you might read to improve some part of your life today. For sure.

Yeah, then infatuated with and obsessed with the stoic philosophers. Yeah. That was two thousand plus years ago in some cases with Marcus Relius and I think. Marcus Realius. I mean that I mean Meditation's that book. is like I mean if you really allow yourself to slowly read and allow those words and allow those phrases to be like imprinted in your mind, I mean that book has more you could read only that book. And have all the wisdom you need probably to live a uh a virtuous, a successful, a adventurous life. I mean that's that's one of my favorite books of all time. So Meditations, just to put it in perspective for folks, so Meditations was written by Marcus Aurelius at the time.

the Emperor of Rome. So he's the most powerful man in the world. And they are effectively entries in a war journal. So they were never intended to be published. So it's his notes to himself, which makes it very interesting. And actually On that point. Mm.

Do you have a journaling habit or I do. When did you start that? When I was about 15. And why did you start doing that? kinda goes back to tennis. I wanted to chart my progress. Like that's how that's how focused I was. I wanted to understand if I was really getting better. And I had read when I was young about other successful athletes that part of what they did was they journaled and they wrote positive affirmations, you know, kind of pre-game. But by journaling it, it was more imprinted in their mind. And I started and it's fun to go back and read some of those journals uh when I was fifteen, like how serious I was as a fifteen year old. It's also a little scary. Um but uh

But Yeah, I I started then and then very quickly it became um a form of kind of therapy for me, you know, as an as an early entrepreneur when you know things were really tough and and you didn't if you're gonna make payroll and you didn't have anyone you didn't want to tell anyone'cause you always had to show this air of confidence and everything's gonna be great. So then at night I could be sc scribbling about how how concerned I was and and kind of confessing a lot of things uh that were bothering me or I was worried about And uh in journaling has been

Um probably the most constant um habit in my life. I mean it I do it Every single morning. Uh sometimes twice a day. But it's interesting. One of the things I I always say to people about journaling is I think it's one of the most powerful habits you can create because a lot of the journaling too is goal setting. And and and really, you know, having the goals and then writing about how you're trying to achieve them and then going back and seeing which ones you're achieving and which ones you're not, and kind of understanding that. But the other thing is

You can learn so much about Um the things that end up working and not working, you can kind of go back and see, you know you know what led to the success or the failure of that idea through the kind the journal path. And you can also see that things that you thought were so important end up not being at all. Especially with girlfriends and things like that in the early days. I mean, so it's it's it's really interesting. I think you can learn a lot. from from journaling. Um and it's something that I

I I tell you know people all the time. Like if there's one thing that can kinda help get your life on a more positive path. Uh journaling is it. So this is gonna be A bit of a left turn from journaling.

Easy laundry. Yes. Tell me all about it. the easy laundry. Well easy laundry I guess was my first Real business. I'm playing tennis, you know, like chasing my dreams at SMU.

I Partially tear my Achilles tendon. So that injury is Six to eight months, leg cast, like And already I was the last guy on the team. So eight months of no playing and new freshmen that are more talented coming in, like I started to realize like

maybe my life pat you know path is not uh to be a professional tennis player. It wasn't until a couple weeks later when my roommate and I were were discussing my huge pile of laundry that was growing in our room because I couldn't do it because I was on crutches. And so the laundry facility is down in the basement and I'm on crutches. And uh And so it was kinda piling up and and and this is back in hard to believe when we looked in the yellow pages for stuff, right? Oh I remember that. You remember that. Some people listening or here today might not remember the yellow pages. Yeah. Yeah. So so I looked in the yellow pages um for someone to pick up my laundry. And the slowest Google ever, by the way. Yeah. And uh and so it's um

There's uh there's nothing that does that. And um my laundry's piling up so it's a real problem and I think this is where a lot of entrepreneurias are born out of necessity, out of the out of some service that you want that's not offered, right? And so I went to school at SMU is a private school in Dallas and there were a lot of, you know, kids who had plenty of disposable income and didn't like doing their laundry too, so I thought What if we had this pick up and delivery laundry service and we called it easy laundry. And the idea is is that we would we would basically pick up the laundry, take it to a facility, do a you know, get a bulk rate with them, and then deliver it back the next day or two days later. Was it true that you guys would do fake deliveries to dorms to try to create the illusion of

Having successful business to drum up demand. This is true. Okay. So can you can you just can you describe how that worked? Uh. So no one wanna kinda be first and be like, oh I'm too lazy to do my own laundry, I'm gonna have someone else do it, or I'm gonna you know, I mean I don't for whatever reason the The the

psychological Uh kind of Um herd mentality in college is very strong. And so we

kind of somehow I don't know how we realized this, but we did. We thought okay, if we start Delivering even though we don't need to deliver. all day long and all people see is our s is our truck driving around campus and me or our employees going into into dorms out of dorms. They're gonna think everyone's doing it and they're missing out. You know? And and that and that also led to more customers because they're like, Man, I see your truck everywhere. I mean, yeah, business is great. And business did become great because they thought that that man, if everyone else is doing this service, then I should be doing it too. So th that worked pretty well in the early days. And by the way, This is not uncommon at all. No, I mean

Case in point. Benjamin Franklin. So most people think of him for Yeah, the kite with the key and so on, whatever it might be. Diplomat maybe, who knows? But He was very famous as a printer. And in the beginning days

To try to drum up business. He would go up and down the street with a wheelbarrow full of all sorts of different printing equipment, back and forth to show how busy he was. To try to get people to come in. And uh and to to drum up business. Turn out very well for you.

I mean it's it I'm I think it's such an important point. Because The best ideas in the best companies that start. Always

Come on. From an entrepreneur. Who Wants a service that he can't get. A product that doesn't exist.

You know, it's it's a frustration. You know, and it and and And the solution is not a business, actually. It's like A crusade. to to to get rid of that frustration. And it really is. And so I always caution people, say you can study entrepreneurship and you can read books about great entrepreneurs, but if you think you're gonna build a great company, it's gotta start with a dissatisfaction, a problem, an itch you want to scratch first, and then you build the business.

But don't think about, okay, I want to build a business, what am I going to build? So what happened? You Eighteen months. That w your tenure was up? Yeah, well I think what happened was is

Is all of a sudden we had So much demand for this laundry service we started and we had customers and you know, not just to SMU, but we'd how we started to expand the University of Texas. uh T C U University of Oklahoma, uh and it was clear that there was all this demand and I was like trying to do my homework at you know at night. running the business in day. I think we had thirty employees at that point. I mean it was just was it was just too much.

But uh but yeah, I dropped out and uh there were so many days after I did that was like oh my god, I wanna go back to college so bad, so easy you know,'cause like all my friends are like, you know, going to a few classes and drinking beer and goofing off and I'm like dealing with these fifteen people's lost genes every week. And um and so uh it wasn't glamorous by any means. Uh it's only glamorous in hindsight when you're like, yeah, it's a college dropout, you know, Bill Gates is a dropout, you know, Michael Dells. I mean it's e it's kind of a nice badge to have now, but it definitely wasn't then. I have to ask because I honestly don't know the answer. How did reality T V come into all this? In two thousand one, my sister and I were on the TV show The Amazing Race. I was twenty five at the time, um, and this was at like the beginning of the reality TV craze that we're still frankly in. I mean it's hard to believe all these years later. And and really this fifteen minutes of fame.

I mean this is a real thing. So all of a sudden, like we're being invited to be on, you know, all these talk shows, late night shows, Jay Leno invited to you know Will Smith's birthday party. I mean just just weird stuff, right? Because everyone was watching the show and we were like we really one of the interesting characters on the show. And what I found was as I was thinking about, you know, this this fac this thing was that like After the 15 minutes and they moved on to the next season, there were still value and the entertainment value in the public's interest in these people. The networks had to move to the next one because it was time to, you know, it was time to promote the next show. So my idea was Is why not have a cable television network?

That would be c a hundred percent focused on reality. And now I knew we couldn't get the big ticket shows, but I knew we could get the stars after. Because there's nothing worse than losing your 15 minutes of fame. You'll do anything to keep it going, right? So I can get these people to come on shows for nothing. Just for their own, you know, to be excited people to be interested in them still. And then possibly you could even create shows that are like you know, based off the characters and when then we could what I knew we could do is we could buy clips of the shows. The part that I didn't know anything about and which is the reason this business became a huge disaster was There's only five or six companies in the country that controlled the distribution of the content. And so when we went to, you know, Comcast and Time Warner and Direct TV and all the different ones.

And they're like well We have five hundred channels right now. is your channel, even if people love your channel, it's not gonna change our business, but we're gonna have to pay you for this content. So we're not that interested. And it was amazing to me, it was such a great business lesson that we had a product that the end customer wanted, and we could make amazing content that they actually really probably cared more about than the other four hundred and twenty channels. But because the person who is controlling

What they saw didn't have a business reason to do it. We could never make it work. Yeah. And so after you know a couple hard years and running through millions of dollars and many a lot of it is my own money, uh we had to go out of business. But I wasn't done. Even though I shut it down and paid back investors and fired forty something people, which was you know, horrible. I wanted to continue to go and so I kind of went into a the w first and only time in my life where I've had actually some real depression and got on like

antidepressants and like things that I never thought in my life I would experience. It wasn't because of so much that we had failed and that we had lost money and that we had to fire people and all that. It was because like I still wanted to do this, but I couldn't. Like it was like it was not I couldn't like solve a new way to do it. And so that was a a tough you know four or five uh months afterwards. Uh which I ultimately got through. But Um but man, what a great lesson. I mean the thing is Where were you at the time you were in LA? I was in LA.

And so the it's I think the lesson is you're thinking about business ideas is definitely when I think about any new thing, even within Tom's now. Is like No matter how good your idea is. You have to make sure. That you if

Your success is falls in the hands of a few companies. that y you don't even start to go forward unless you can make sure that at least you get one of those c companies as a customer. Because if and and that's why I think it was so great when we start Tom's and shoe business or or apparel whatever, like there's thousands of stores that could potentially buy your shoes. So it doesn't think I had to get one of the big guys early on. You know, you could just get a couple and then build from there. Yeah, you de-risk it a whole lot. Now I want to come back to, if you don't mind, just that period of depression. I've had extended bouts of depression. Runs my family. And not gonna blame it on that, but that's probably a component.

Uh What was it like in your darkest periods during those five months. I think the hardest thing was is like not wanting to get out of bed. Like I'm a very energetic person. I like usually jump out of bed with both feet on the floor.

Well before the sun has come up. my whole entrepreneurial life. And like Not having a business to go to. Having just

kinda lost a lot of credibility with potential investors or you know, because I was now you know failed entrepreneur, not just a successful entrepreneur, and having run through a lot of my own financial resources. Like it was like well, what am I gonna do today? What What did bring you out of it? I mean what were the things that helped

get you back on your feet. At the time I was reading a lot of Richard Branson's stuff. And I was I I read Losing My Virginity, which is a great book you never read. Yeah. And it was just I was like and I loved his approach businesses that had been around forever and turning them on their head by basically just making them fun Sarcastic, sexy, et cetera. And so I looked at the driver's ed business and this is something that's been around since my ki my parents learned to drive, right? And they were brick and mortar buildings, they were usually connected to like a sears or something. And and and and they didn't try to

Um accommodate their students. pushed him through this like cattle. So I did two things. I it's called Drivers That Direct. And this is how I got the swagger back'cause I I really got excited about this idea for a number of reasons. Uh the first was is we were gonna have no classrooms. So we're just gonna eliminate that cost and all the classwork would be online.

Now they would have to learn to drive in a car. But the online part they would make it fun and then we do it online and we would make sure they're paying attention because they couldn't get to the next part of the class. until they pass real time quizzes. But the second thing I did And this is what I think was the thing that really made it take off.

Is I recognize Los Angeles you have a lot of models and actors that need part-time work. And they need flexible schedules. Instead of these teenagers learning from old ladies, what if they're learning from Abercrombie and Fitch models? That's gonna keep a teenager girl's attention, right? I mean, if this girl has this hunky guy you know teaching her to drive, she's gonna pay attention to him. And she's gonna tell all her friends on MySpace how hot her driver's dead teacher is. And it's the same thing for the guys. And so we hired like the hottest models and actors who needed part-time work in between editions. We were totally flexible with their hours. And and it went fire, it went crazy on MySpace. I mean every kid is like, you I mean I think people signed up who had already completed drivers dead just because they I mean it was like it was crazy.

So we talked about drivers at direct. Yeah. Then in two thousand six You went to one of my favorite places. Place you know well. Argentina. Yeah. Why do you go to Argentina?

I would take the month of January off every year. No matter what. No matter what was going on business wise. I would take a month, I would go somewhere that was totally different, uh have a totally new cultural experience, get away from work. Then come back and then just immerse myself for eleven more months and have that month to look forward to.

And so I decided that for my month this year, uh in two thousand six, I would go to Argentina. One thing that I had already noticed and already had a big impression on me, and this started when we were on the Amazing Race, but even more so in Argentina. was just how much poverty there was only an hour outside the city. And I mean there were you know

Kids on the street, not wearing shoes. Shanty Town, Sun Dog millionaire. Exactly. I mean it's exactly what it looks like. You know, people living in homes built of aluminum siding, um, no electricity, no water. I mean it was just I couldn't believe it. And it was on the third week that I was there. that I was in this cafe, this wine cafe, and I heard some uh women speaking in English. And uh they had been doing volunteer work.

They were working with this nonprofit in Argentina and one of the things that they were doing was a shoe drive. And they explained to me that uh it was uh ging time, about time for uh school again, the next semester, and there were many kids that um were not able to go to school'cause they couldn't afford the uniform or the shoes. And shoes was part of the uniform. They had to wear a close toe shoe. And so I agreed to go on this on this on this trip and they picked me up uh a couple days later and we got in a van and we had a big U Haul full of shoes and we went to this this town. And at first, not having ever done anything like this, I was a little bit just kind of standing back and watching and why and and these girls they were just right on their hands and knees and putting shoes on kids and giving them hugs and and it was just like this joyful thing. So I very quickly just jumped in and and started to try to figure it out. And I remember that night I came home

Um, I'm staying at the polo camp still and uh my polo teacher Alejo Um he asked me wh where I was it day,'cause I wasn't playing polo and I said, Well, actually I did this and he's like, Did that on your vacation? And he says to me, he says, You know, but like Um it's awesome that you guys gave him shoes and but you're leaving like in five more days and these women are going back to their countries like Who's gonna give them their next pair? And I was never prepared for this question.

And when I when he asked this question 'Cause he's like you know, kids' feet are gonna grow fast or they're gonna if there's only pair they're wear out of'em. And if they need'em for school You know, you've now give'em this pair. But who's gonna give them the next pair? And at that point

I actually questioned whether we had done anything good at all. Like maybe what we did that day was just made ourselves feel great. Because we got this great, you know, kind of feeling and oh my gosh, we did something nice for someone and they loved on us and we left feeling so full. But If we just set up a future you know disappointment, like we'd actually cause more harm than good if there wasn't a way to sustain these kids in shoes. And so talk about like some difficult moments in life. I remember going to bed that night

Like having kind of that joy and the excitement almost ripped out of me. And thinking, gosh, this is like like This is this d just w I don't know what the answer is, but there's gotta be something a way to to to to to uh make sure these kids get their next pair of shoes. It's the next morning. Woke up. Got the journal out. Um, had my cup of coffee, sitting on the farm, uh where the polo camp was.

And I was just writing, you know, in my journal and I was saying, you know Maybe I could go and ask all my friends to donate You know, fifty bucks a year. And now I'd buy four pairs of shoes. And that way every every three months they get a new pair. Or We all have too many shoes in our closet, right? I mean I'm sure we could all get rid of half of our shoes and we would not have any effect on our life whatsoever. Maybe I could get those. And I started thinking about adult sizes or different kids sizes and all these things and

And and I just I I just quickly got to the part of like I don't think charity is the answer. Like I don't think Asking for donations or handouts is really gonna sustain this. Now this might work for a year or two, but then it's gonna even be even a bigger problem if I don't get the donations or don't get the the handouts.

And then that's when my not only that, but you have to spend all your time fundraising and not focusing on building out the organization and so on. Well, yes, but at this point I'm not even thinking about an organization. I'm thinking about two hundred and fifty kids. Yeah, right. I mean that's my only that I mean, I'm only emotionally connected to two hundred and fifty kids. Not in the world thinking about anyone else or the fact that there's kids in Cambodia that don't have shoes or kids that have frostbite in Mangolia or kids that had protoconiosis in Ethiopia. I mean I knew nothing about any of this at that point. But I do care about these two hundred fifty kids. I spent all day with them, I I connected with them, I I I I saw the joy that they got. And so

So In my journal that morning I Just turned in a pretty natural flow to business. Like every my life for ten years. I mean I'm now twenty nine years old, so I've been been I've been an entrepreneur for ten years and

I had used business to solve problems. Like that's the way I looked at entrepreneurship. Something I don't like as we were talking about earlier, or something that I don't think is fair or right in the world. Let's see if we can change it with business and so I was just writing my journal. I said you know, what if we started uh actual business That had a very simple model. You sold shoes to people who wanted them and you gave shoes to people who needed them. And and uh we'd call it one for one. And that was just it was like you know just literally this much of one of hundreds of journals. But as I'm finishing that thought

The the great Alejo, and this is he's one of the greatest human beings you ever meet, most enthusiastic people I've ever met. comes up and he and he says, It's time for breakfast before the polo match that uh you're running late. Let's go, let's go. And I said, No, Leo, I I think I have an answer to your question. I said you know instead of a charity, what if there was a business that sold these shoes? that you guys all wear here in Argentina and that we don't have in the United States. Yeah gatas I mean you remember when you were there and every time we sell a pair we give a pair. And over a month we got the first it was two hundred and fifty pairs were the the initial prototypes.

Um because there were two hundred and fifty kids in this village that we wanted to come give another pair to after we sold them. And we stuffed them in three duffel bags we bought at the at the local, you know, kind of equivalent of a footlocker and put'em in you know, checked them and got through customs somehow without getting them confiscated or you know. And uh and and and and literally got them back to LA in my apartment in Venice. How did you get your first retailer? Your first Key retail, if that makes sense.

So I was going just cold calling these stores and when I found out really quickly if you emailed or called a store and said you wanted to sell them shoes that they didn't know anything about the brand, you never got a response. You had to go there in person. So I was going in person and but very often I was going the person on the weekends because during the week I'm running the driver's ed company still.

And so there aren't usually shoe buyers working on the weekends, it's just staff. But luckily I got On r on American Rag on a Saturday, I got Courtney was working that day. And so she's like, Yeah, I'll look at it, whatever And she's a pretty curious, kind of cool, interesting person. Um and I started the shoes and and e even before I got to the story, she kinda thought, This is kinda cool. Like this is they're a very progressive fashion, they like the new thing. And she's like I'll buy she's like, How much inventory do you have?

And I was like, Well I got like Two hundred and ten pairs left. I've sold like forty to friends and family, a couple online. You not a little rinky dinky website that like might you know, parents are reordering from from Texas and stuff. And um And so

Uh but she's like I need a way to tell the story and so we I I showed her a picture and and we put it and she put it like by the display and on a piece of cardboard we wrote what we thought was our kind of mission and that was with every pair you purchase, we will give a pair to a child in need, one for one. We put that there. And um And she bought I think eighty five pairs, which was like a third of my inventory, which I was super excited about. And um and the and the funny thing about

that and I mean that led to so many other things, but w the the main thing that led to was uh a woman from LA Times saw These shoes and saw on the cardboard that we were gonna give away a pair for every pair we sold. And this woman's name is Booth Moore. And uh at the time she was the leading fashion writer of the LA Times and one of the most syndicated fashion writers in the world. I mean, everyone read her columns. And so she asked Courtney for my information and Courtney gave it to me and

I did the interview and was like super excited and And and And uh but I didn't really have a i idea of like what this would potentially do to what we were calling this as a time as a project. We'd even call it a business. It was the Tom's project. You know, because I had a business with the driver's ed business. This was the project. And so I didn't know what was gonna happen with the project when this article came out, but two weeks after the interview On the cover of the LA Times, there were two headlines. This is the calendar section. It was DaVinci Code opens with three hundred million in box office sales, which you know people in LA care about these things. And then the second thing is uh

Tom Shoes. Listen to this. We sold twenty two hundred pairs On our website. before noon that day. Now I only had a hundred and thirty pairs in my apartment.

So like this is the first of many supply chain. This is the good news bad news. Yeah, this is the good news bad news. So I mean it was like It was crazy had this little article, wasn't it a big article, had this response of of people in Los Angeles to go on this little tiny website and and um somehow trust it and buy shoes and the the website said you would get your shoes in four to five days because we you know we're just shipping them out of my apartment one at a time. So Now I have you know an order for 2200. We've already charged these people's credit card, by the way, because it just automatically goes through. I have no idea if Aleho in one can make these shoes. I mean I don't even think they think they're ever gonna see me again. And so I literally land at the airport, I've got a little duffel bag, like toiletries, maybe two things of clothes, and the LA Times.

And I Take a taxi directly to Juan's house. They're both there, you know, drinking their mate like everyone does in Argentina. Just totally chilled out. Like they like no problems in the world. And I might come in like, you know, bad out of hell, and I'm like... Muchos Zapatos Rapido. That's all the Spanish I knew. And that's all the Spanish I needed. And I showed them that article and they just couldn't believe it. And so Juan calls his friend and then friend and next thing you know there's like all these different Argentines making these shoes as fast as they can in their garages, which ultimately became a barn, which became our first factory down there. Two weeks later.

Um and let me just preface this with because it's important to understand uh get a picture of what our apartment's like at the time. So we have this apartment in Venice. Um and have three interns. So two weeks after that article comes out, I'm walking by it was in the kitchen, walking by the kitchen area and the phone rings. So I pick it up. I say hello, this is Blake.

Tom Shoes. And there's this guy on the airline. And you can tell he's a little bit agitated from the first minute. I need to order a hundred pairs women's toms. I need red, I need blue, I need natural, and I need them to go out tomorrow. Now I'm like, whoa, like I mean we've had people maybe order two or three pairs, but a hundred pairs, one person, this is like not this doesn't make sense. Cause all we're doing is selling online at this point.

And and I said, Well gosh, first off, like this is amazing. Hundred pairs. Like who is this? Like where are you calling from? He says, Oh yes, I'm the assistant women shoe buyer at Nordstrom in Seattle at the corporate office. Now, I don't know a lot about shoes, but I know that Nordstrom is like the holy grail of shoes at this point. Like people been talking to me about Nordstrom, Nordstrom. And I know that like they don't call you at your apartment. Like it takes Like you beg to get a meeting with these guys, right? So I'm a little bit like is this really or this is a prank. But I can tell this guy's like really focused on on on this order. And so As I'm thinking about this, I realize

You know we have no shoes, right? We've sold out. So I said to the guy, I'm like, Okay, this is awesome, hundred pairs. We can do that. Probably gonna be about two or three weeks. He's like, No, no, I need them tomorrow, like my boss wants them yesterday. I need them tomorrow. And I'm like, Well, we're sold out. And he goes, No, you can't be sold out. Just bump someone else's order. Like this is Nordstrom calling. Like no one tells us we're sold out. So I'm like, okay, sir, but like I don't think you really understand the situation. Like I'm not I can't bump someone else's order. Like I literally don't have any shoes to send you. At this point the guy gets pissed off and he goes

This is what he says to me, he goes, and my phone's like, you know, about to start beeping. And he's like. He does. Listen, buddy. If you can't help me. Put me in touch with the sales department.

So With the bet. But the best part of this whole thing is, while this conversation's going on, my three interns are sitting there eating breakfast tacos that they just got from Rose Cafe. And one of the girls, Lena, is like laughing because she can overhear this conversation. And and after that I didn't really know what to say, and so she's like, Blake, give me the phone. Give me the phone. So I literally it's about to start beeping, so I just toss it to her anyways. And without even I this was my favorite moments in the history of Toms, without even blinking or hesitating, she just goes

Hi, this is Lina, head of sales. So Ha ha

We're gonna pull up a photo of early days Some Tom's I think in one of your original apartments. I have a funny story about these bags too. Let's hear about the bags. So these bags almost sunk the company. Literally.

We were almost out of business because of the bags. So 'Cause it's something that never comes up in interviews. I actually had two big ideas with Toms. The first idea is that we were gonna give a pair to a kid for every pair we sold and we're gonna help kids in Argentina who needed shoes to go to school.

That's the idea that became famous and that people know us for. The second idea is we were gonna be the first shoe company to eliminate the horrible waste of carbon box boxes. Think about when you buy a pair of shoes. What do you do with the box? You throw it away. And most of you probably don't even recycle it. I mean g it's hard, you know, it's not easy to recycle sometimes.

And and especially ten years ago, very few people were recycling stuff like boxes. And I hated the fact that there was so much waste being created by the shoe industry. And so I got these recyclable, you know, um bags, linen bags that were made of of uh materials that could be repurposed and also it could be used for something. You could put stuff in it and whatnot. And so we were gonna be the first company to only use bags. So that worked great when our initial sales were online because someone would order a pair, you stick the bag in the in the in the box or the FedEx envelope or whatever you sent and you sent it and you did not have to waste another box. But then when we got into Nordstrom. They said.

Okay, I mean this is we were starting to get some press, we're in vogue, it's exciting, like you know, they're like, Okay, we're in and we're gonna give it a shot. We're gonna be five stores in Southern California. And um They said uh but we need boxes. And I was like, No, there are no boxes. And they're like

Yeah, but that's you understand like the way that our business works is we have stock rooms and every brand gets a stock room and they have boxes by size and so when someone wants a seven they come and get a seven. It won't work with bags. And I'm like Well then we're not gonna do business. And they're like, What? And I'm like, Well we're we're not gonna create waste in the world with these boxes, so we're gonna use bags. And the buyer was just like, first off, I I don't think anyone ever told Nordstrom like they're just not gonna do business. But I mean I once again I wasn't thinking of it like a business. And I was and I was adamant about this bag thing because I was getting really good feedback. Cause like people love the fact that I mean they they connected with this idea. So anyway so

The guy who was a buyer said fine, like We're we'll try it. I mean, but I'm telling this is gonna be really really hard to stack bags. And and if our associates who make money on commission have trouble getting your shoes They won't sell as well. I was like, Well let's just give it a shot.

So The first week, it's actually pretty easy to stack bags. Our sales the first week are like doing great. Like I'm calling, I'm like so excited, whatever. Second week is like an abrupt halt. I mean not I don't think a pair sells. And I'm like, what happened?

He goes. Go to you know La Brea Nordstrom and look in the stock room. I go in there, it's a tangled mess. Because each bag has a string and then a tag on it and they get caught. And I mean literally you can't pull these bags apart. So now when the customer comes in and says I want size seven. The person's not gonna waste their time and lose commission and say, Well how about a pair of vans instead? Right. You know, or we're sold out. That was the thing, everyone's thinking, right, they're sold out. I'm like they're not sold out, they're in there. And so literally, Nordstrom said, um Until you get boxes, like no more business.

And so we actually got kicked out of North Shrooms. It took us about six months or so before we finally got into like boxes,'cause it wasn't just so easy as like getting any old box. We want to design the box and all this. And so literally It's like it's so interesting because I feel like In business you

Breaking rules s sometimes leads to innovation in new companies and all these things. But you gotta know which rules to break. Cause some rules that you just can't break. And I mean we Have boxes today. So So You know, I mean it's funny, those early memories are are so great, but it and it But it hopefully it shows other entrepreneurs and people thinking about businesses like They all start

You know, in a garage, in an apartment, it with an idea, with a group of people who believe in it before anyone else. You struggle with all these crazy things and then if you just keep at it long enough, enough good things start happening. So what what I wanna do, we we have there's so many things. We could go for a five hour talk here. But before we do that, what I'd like to do is take some audience QA. Great. So we have Some questions that were gathered. During the break. And so I'm gonna start with as an entrepreneur we all face fear. What was your greatest fear in business? And then part two, what does failure look like to you?

Mm. That's a really good question. Um So I had different fears of different businesses, but

I wanna stick to Tom's because I think it was Probably The Most motivating fear. Um I think sometimes fear can

Um paralyze you. in business or in life or relationships and sometimes it can be the greatest motivator And and the greatest catalyst for success. So I go to Argentina after that first giving trip. We've given ten thousand shoes. We originally were trying to do two hundred fifty kids.

So ten thousand's amazing, right? But also what I created now is ten thousand kids who need another pair of shoes. So the very problem that I was trying to allyate. Through the business idea. actually was exasperated with that initial success. Because I was not thinking about 10,000 kids when I had 250 shoes made. I was thinking

uh something that seemed very manageable and that is these two hundred and fifty kids getting them shoes. But now once we sold and gave away ten thousand. I had this I left that trip. Not As excited as I should have been.

I left thinking. Oh my gosh, I can't let these communities down. Like they think we're coming back in four months. and giving another ten thousand pairs of shoes away. So I've got to make sure that I can sell these shoes. And frankly I didn't know how I was gonna do it. I mean, we had had some luck with this media and we got some momentum, but I mean there was no guarantee that anyone was placing more orders for 10,000 shoes. And so I remember, like, I mean, I was barely sleeping. I was definitely not healthy in terms of the hours I was working. And it wasn't because I was loving it or it was fun or I was having the high from the joy of the kids. I was literally afraid of having to go back there and be like, uh, we don't have any more shoes, or we only sold two thousand pairs, so only I twenty percent of you get shoes. So

So So Fear really was a motivator and and and has been in many different chapters in Tom's, not because I was afraid of failing as a business. I'd already done that before with my reality channel, but failing other humans. is a much h heavier burden to wear, especially when they have so little and they're expecting so much. So that's really how fear has been a great motivator for me.

Uh one or two to three books you can't live without. Mm. The four hour work week. I mean I did I did give him a twenty earlier. I uh I didn't have the middle toughness to get through the four hour body, so um

But No, I mean in all seriousness like that book was a huge influence as I said before, which I'm super grateful for. Um You know, I'd say uh The books that have had the biggest impact on me in in the last

few years. Uh it's called The Art of Power. It's by a Vietnamese Buddhist monk. Name Tottenh Han and and the great thing about it is it talks about the di when he's talking about the art of power, it's definitely not the way we think of power in the West. But really the power power of mindfulness and really of of being able to be present in the moment. in everything that you're doing. And I found that that book, which I've read multiple times now

Is that a huge huge, huge influence on just how I try to approach my day. My business. parenting, my marriage. Everything. So I I highly recommend

uh that book if you if you haven't read it. Um Meditations we talked about earlier. Marcus Realis is an Marcus Aurelius is another really, really great one. I think Depending on where you are in your journey, I think both of Howard Schultz's books amazing for entrepreneurs.

His first book uh was called Pour Your Heart Into It. It's the early story of Starbucks and how it was created. And I think it really illustrates a lot of amazing things that entrepreneurs can learn from. And then His second book, which is was a really important book for me to read at a point in which I actually left the business for a while and then came back to it, was called Onward, and that was about some of the struggles that Starbucks went through and and how they kind of rebuilt the culture in the company in the last ten years. And so I'm really thankful that Howard was so vulnerable and open with that book. 'cause I think it it it answered a lot of questions I was having at the time, uh as as well. So those are a

A couple of of of good ones that I would recommend. And uh note on uh so Tick Not Hun. the Vietnamese Buddhist monk, he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by uh Dr. Martin Luther King Junior. Really fascinating guy. And his first book, which was kind of like Meditations in the sense that it wasn't intended to be a book, called I believe it's Pieces Every Step. Pieces Every Step, yeah. is fantastic. And it was actually a guide intended to be given to new monks. And visitors to his

uh center in, I guess it was at the time, perhaps it was in Vietnam. It's in France. It's in France, right? Uh fantastic, fantastic book. One more just because we're in California and it's uh someone I've also looked up and learned a lot from is and it just came out with the I think maybe the 10 or 20th year anniversary version is Yvonne Shenard, who started Patagonia, uh Let My People Go Surfing. It's it's a fantastic book. Um about company culture. It also shares some really tough times and the Patagonia ups and downs that I that I learned a lot from. Uh and also I think it was interesting because when he wrote the book ten years ago, it was kind of the beginning of internet sales and It really shows how they did not um

They did not risk their business by having too much of their sales in one place. They have a wholesale business, they have retail stores, they have online, they have catalog. And that's something that we've done with Tom's over the years is to move away from just online to now wholesale and now we're spending a lot of our energy building our own retail stores. This next one is if you lost everything today, what would you be thankful for? Well, I mean

The truth is is It's impossible for me to lose everything today. Because everything that I have has very little to do with what I have materially. The experiences I've had, the memories I have, the friends, the family, that's what I have, and that literally can't be taken away.

So I mean And Yeah, no one's really asked me that question, but I I could respond that quickly because that's immediately what I think about when I think of the the greatest memories and moments of my life and that's why this has been so much fun is I'm getting to go beyond memory lane. And those are memories that even if the business e you know, blew up tomorrow, I would still have those memories. Have have your experiences let's just say at Tom's but it could be across the board. And I also want to highlight one thing for folks which which we

Well, I glossed over earlier. I didn't dig into so you mentioned all these businesses that seem to have nothing to do with one another. Yeah. But What are the meta skills that you're developing? You're learning to negotiate. You're learning how to attract and manage talent. You're learning how to mitigate or evaluate risk, right? So even though the businesses, the industries seem totally unrelated.

The skills he's developing do carry from one to the next. Absolutely. How have your business experiences affected how You parrot. Yeah.

I I I'm really glad you asked this question because it's something that I have a lot of One of the big things is with my wife have is a monthly calendar date. I say date, like it's really not a date, sometimes a battle. But uh it usually ends pretty good. Uh because we drink enough wine to like you know to compromise. Yeah. But but the calendar is king.

Like if you have a busy life, if you have uh if you're driving hard in work and family Like I mean the calendar is is the king'cause w we put things on the calendar, they stick. You know, that's kind of our thing. Like, and so we make sure, like if I wanna say my goal right now І spend either two mornings or two afternoons every week at home. With our son, just me and him, not with my wife, just like we either take him on a hike in the backpack, take him to the beach, you know, just play in his room, whatever, but that's my goal. And it will never ever happen if it's a goal in my journal.

It will only happen if In my case, my wife, my assistant, and I all put it on the calendar. Because if it's on the calendar, you're accountable to it. She's like, you put this I mean no meetings and then nothing gets scheduled. So for me, the way that we do it is very much focusing on on on booking things and and scheduling even little things which might seem ridiculous. Like you put play with your son on the calendar, like that could seem that could come off like really like I don't know what just off putting. But the truth is, if it's on the calendar it happens and even if that seems ridiculous, as long as it happens, that's what's the most important thing. So yeah. Um

Yeah, and and And that's also beyond, you know, just time my son. Like I one thing that I've always had is a lot of hobbies. Like I love to surf, I love to snowboard, I like to fly fish. I have lots of friends that like these hobbies. We climb together in the summer and so it's the same thing. Like just as I'm planning that business trip to Asia to do a press tour because we've opened in a lot of stores there. If I'm gonna give two weeks to that, I'm also gonna make sure I'm giving two weeks to doing stuff with my buddies and making sure I stay connected to them. Because one thing you find uh as we get older and you you know y especially especially unfortunately this happens more with men I think than women is we really lose touch with our guy friends.

Like we focus on our family, we focus on our jobs and and that's like one of my dad has always said one of his biggest regrets is as he's had this amazing life is that like he focused so much time on his family and his jobs and my mom that he didn't as and he got older in his forties and his fifties, he looked around and he didn't have Guys to really depend on. And so that's another thing that I've always since learning from my dad that have placed an importance on it doesn't have to be a lot of time, but it has to be quality when you do it. And and that usually comes from once again scheduling it on the calendar. Yeah, if it's not on the calendar, it's not real. Yeah. For sure. If you had a gigantic billboard

Or side of a building. Okay. And you could put any message on it. Mm. Meaning like getting it out to a lot of people, right? Been uh І з Ліби Мантра с Ас.

Nineteen years old. And that is carpe diem. Sees the day. Because we have no we have very little control whether we'll be on this planet tomorrow. I mean

I could die in a fatal car crash on the way home. And that's it. And so if I don't Literally live every day as if it might be my last. then I am I am I am not doing a service to the life I've been given.

And unfortunately, that became my mantra after Um one of my best friends died in a plane crash when I was eighteen. And I realize I can do nothing to get him back. But I could honor his life by living every day if it was gonna be my last.

And so every email you've ever received from me, there's never a yours or a thank you or truly. I sign every email, every letter, carpe diem, and I have since I was nineteen. And you know, some people they don't know me feel like oh that's kinda little cheesy, that's a little too optimistic, that's a little too much to think of, like seizing every day. But I believe that is the mantra that has served me so well because I have I have I've committed my life to doing that. Like if I do that, then I'm giving the most I can to what I've been given. Ladies and gentlemen, Blake Mikoskey. Hey guys, this is Tim again, just one more thing before you take off, and that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend?

Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It's kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading. albums perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests, and these strange esoteric things end up in my field and then I test them and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about. If you'd like to try it out, just go to Tim.blog slash Friday. Type that into your browser, Tim.blog slash. Friday, drop in your email and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening.

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