Title Nine: Missy Park

So you get these catalogs. fifteen or twenty thousand catalogs. And and h how did you do how many orders did you get from those So we put those catalogs and then I'm just Wait.

For the phone to ring. Yeah. And Waiting. And Waiting.

Okay. And I think we got a whopping Maybe. Fifteen. Maybe seven of'em.

Or from someone that I did not know. Wow, that's for mailing out. Over twenty thousand catalogs. That's the hit rate. Super sad. Super sad.

Ramen PR? That's how I built this. A show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements. They built. I'm Guy Raz, and on the show today, how Missy Park's frustration with bad fitting sports gear.

led her to launch Title IX. One of the very first American sportswear brands, exclusively. For women. About a year ago, I was riding my bike near the railroad tracks in Berkeley, California. when I passed a clothing store with an unusual name.

The store was called Title Nine and I thought it might have something to do with a law, but A law I couldn't remember right at that moment. So a few days later. I looked it up.

Title IX, I was reminded, was a US civil rights law passed in 1972. It prohibited discrimination based on sex in any federally funded school or educational program. And among the things the law did was to open up high school and college sports. To women. Colleges and universities that received federal dollars.

now had to provide the same opportunities for women to participate in sports as they did for men. According to the Women Sports Foundation Before 1972, just one in 27 young women played sports. Today. The number is two out of five.

In that year, nineteen seventy two. Less than twenty percent of all the athletes on the US Olympic team? Or women. But by 2016? Nearly fifty-five percent of the team was female.

And much of this is because of Title IX. The same year Title IX was required to take effect in schools, 1976. Missy Park joined her high school basketball team in Greenville, South Carolina. She'd go on to play Division I basketball at Yale. But after years of wearing bad fitting sports apparel as a student athlete,

Missy decided to solve her own problem. And in nineteen eighty nine. long before anyone would hear the names Lululemon or Athleta, Missy Park founded Title Nine. one of the first brands to make sports apparel.

For women. Now, today, many of those other brands are multi-billion dollar companies, either backed by venture capital or publicly traded. But Title IX is comparatively small. This year, it will do roughly$100 million in revenue. And unlike its competitors.

Title Nine is owned. Only by one person. Missy Park. She bootstrapped the brand from day one and built it very, very slowly. If the company grew by five or even ten percent a year,

That was considered a victory. And that slow growth has allowed the company to build a sustainable and supportive culture. Missy Park grew up in the sixties and seventies in Greenville, South Carolina. in the foothills of the smoky mountains. Her dad was a World War II veteran and became kind of an overnight entrepreneur when he bought the small manufacturing company that he once worked for.

And as for her mom. My mom, on the other hand. Was a stay at home mom, and we always accuse her of being part of a Secret feminist cell in Greenville, South Carolina in the sixtiz. Because she was

What she thought women ought to be paid for birthing babies. Yeah. T I would say that was pretty ahead of her time. My mom and dad had separate checking accounts. I remember my mom fighting to get her credit card in her own name rather than in Mrs. Russell Hunter Park. So my mom loved being a full time homemaker, but she thought it was a position worth paying for. And this was really I mean this was

People don't remember, I mean the seventies was I mean, this is the era of ERA, the Equal Rights Amendment, and of Shirley Chisholm and Bella Abzug, you know, with her hats, right? Th there were there was Huge. leaps a and strides that happened in the seventies. And from your description of your mom, she was Either secretly harboring those feelings or maybe

Not so secretly harbouring them. Yeah, well you know, my parents were so unusual. Like my mom was in charge of the girls and and our allowances. And we had budgets and we had to reconcile at the end of the every month and we had to give Money to savings and to offerings, and each year we would take on other responsibilities. It was her expectation that we would go up to be

financially independent women capable of running our own Finances in our own life. Yeah. And um

As a little girl, or maybe even a a young teen Did you know for sure you were not gonna end up living in Greenville, South Carolina? N no, I I would say I'm the kind of person that maybe everybody else Is for sure about it and no one's more surprised than me. You know, I

I really loved growing up in Greenville. It was at the time a great place for me. It's a small place. I could ride my bike everywhere. I was in that first generation of girls and women that were able to grow up with Title Nine um being in effect. All the way through high school and all the way through college. And of course Title Man just g kinda opened up.

uh sports for for women and girls at the time. Um and you got to Play lots of bangs. Yes. I got to play every sport. You know, I I mean I coming up when I did

Especially as a girl, you just played all the sports. Um and if you were willing to play and you were willing to try You were pretty good because there weren't as many women pouring into the sports and fields as there are now. So yes, I we will say, Guy, I think that I was a big fish in a very small pond. That's what I'll say. Well I'm I'm curious because here you are You were in a small southern town in the seventies.

Being a debutante is a was, and to some extent still is, but less less so. Was a kind of a cultural phenomenon in the south. Was there like were you a debutant, for example? Oh my gosh, I hate your guts right now.

So let's just go on the record right now I hate your cuts. Um Yes, I was a debutant. Now you and me and all of your listeners know that. And in my home office here you could see my little rebellion against that. There's a picture of me at what, about nineteen in a a white gown with long gloves that actually won't go up above my upper arm and biceps, sadly. Um, and I'm spinning a basketball and I have my basketball sneakers on. So you were forced or kind of pressured to to to be a Dibby Cont.

You know, here's the danger of things like that. Yeah, I'm just a kid. This is where I grow up. Sure. And Now I look back on it. And and I see it differently. But it was one of those things, you know, I love my mom and dad and

Had very quickly understood like There's some battles That if you can give in And it's not much skin off my back. Yeah.

Then I should just do it because it's gonna make my mom so happy. But it is the source of a lot of amusement amongst my family and close friends, more because it's So different. From who I am. Exactly. Yeah. And

How would you describe yourself as A teenager were you Did you get along with everybody? Were you um A pleaser No.

Definitely not a pleaser. I would say I'm pretty loud. I speak before I think. Yeah. I have strong opinions that can change quickly. I think I was an okay student. I think I got along well with most folks.

Yeah. I mean you must have been Better than an okay student,'cause you went to Yale. You attended Yale. Um I will also tell you this that

I we joke about it in my family, but my parents single greatest failing is that they have a daughter that went to Yale. Because There's an awful lot of good schools um in the south. Sure. And there are.

Did I think my parents really wanted me? Um to go to one of those great southern schools. All right, yeah, nineteen eighty, I think. About nineteen eighty. You get to New Haven. Yep. You played. Several sports there, lacrosse, tennis.

um and basketball. You are an athlete. That is your w was that your identity, your self identity as an athlete? Totally. Yeah. You get to Yale, you're Missy Park the basketball player. Yes, the southern basketball player when I get to Yale. Yeah. And and just to be clear, there were Um there were women's sports, right? At at Yale. They had had been for a long time. Yeah. But the difference when you got there was title nine.

Which had been was passed in in nineteen seventy two is in full effect, right? And and so what did that mean when you were when you got to Yale in nineteen eighty as a student athlete? Well, I think a lot with my generation in particular, Guy, you know, yes, Title Nine was passed, but Yes, the seventies had happened, but

We were still in that place of everything that we gain. is a loss. For That was a perspective that you as a woman athlete are taking away resources from me.

As a Male athlete. Exactly. And in some ways, yes, that was true. It's like all of a sudden the men's basketball team doesn't have The pick of all of the basketball.

Practice times. They have to share them with the women's team. Do those four years feel like There were battles? Yeah.

Well, I think it also it goes to sort of the genesis of Title Man the Company is, you know, me and my teammates are getting uniforms that are hand me down men's uniforms. I remember my my buddy Regina Sullivan she wore I think like a size six and a half women's shoe, but they don't make women's shoes. So she had to go to like The little kids department at Macy's and buy some little boys sneakers. So the sense of having to create

the traditions around a team what it means to get success. While at the same time fighting for the good practice times, marketing support in the community. Those were battles being fought on two fronts for sure. And as I said, the genesis of Title Nine. I mean, I remember my buddies and I were all like, ah, when we graduate from college, we're gonna go get some experience, and then we're gonna start the women's version of Nike. They all went and got

really good jobs in you know investment banking, Proctor Gamble, Microsoft. And I was the only one that actually ended up not getting one of those good jobs, so I had to figure out something else to do. Alright, you graduate. um in around eighty four. Mm-hmm. And from what I gather you wanted you decided that you would go into into coaching. That y maybe you would like explore Professional coach of some sort.

Right. I was lucky enough to be offered a job at our art travel. At Harvard. And then I found it very difficult to coach against my Former teammates.

And a job opened up at Yale the following year. But I think I realised at that point. That Coaching a team was never gonna be the same thing as playing on a team. Yeah, I I there's a book by David Epstein called The Sports Gene and and he makes an analogy between

A player and a coach, and the analogy is Just because you're a bird is It doesn't mean you can be an ornithologist. And I think that's right. Well yes, correct. And I think that's right.

All right, so you realize that that that And it's the mid eighties. You're from Greenville, South Carolina. You're living in New England. What got you out to the West Coast? What was it?

I knew I didn't want to live in the south. Okay. I knew I didn't want to be cold. Fair enough. I knew I didn't have any money. My brother lived in California.

So I Packed up my I had a Toyota pickup truck. I packed up all of my worldly belongings. And my parents had given me a tent. for graduation from college because

They knew exactly what I would want. A tent. That's a tent, right? Like who? What southern pair I mean, like who would do that? Right? But they knew I wanted a tent, so I In those days you had to seam seal the tent to seal up all the little needle holes so it wouldn't leak and I'm uh unrolling the tent and I'm taking off the hang tag and I look at it and it says The North Face Nan na Harrison Street.

Berkeley, California. Wow. So I moved in with my brother. Um, I'd also led some bike trips for kids, so I was really loved cycling and It's like okay, I either want to work for a bike company or I wanna work for the North Face. Yeah. So

I started just walking into bike shops, asking them, you know, about bike companies that were in California and how I might get a job and One of those bike shops I ran into a guy by the name of Michael Phillips. Who happened to be a sales rep um for some old bike brand And he's like

You looking for a job? It's like well, why don't you come? Ride with me in my van for a day while I call on customers I can teach you about the business. Well. Well, my brother had different ideas. He was like, This guy's creepy. Don't do it. Exactly. Um While that was going on, Michael, and then at the same time I was kinda trying to

Find my way into the north face and I had heard at the time that There was another young woman about my age that was leading up the equipment division in the North Face, a woman by the name of Sally McCoy, who was from Charlotte, North Carolina, and had gone to Dartmouth. And was a little bit older than I was, I was like, okay, she's the person I need to talk to. Yeah.

But I can't get anybody right, y you know, you're not emailing people. Like maybe you write'em a letter. I don't know what you do. Well what I do is I find out nine nine nine Harrison Street and I Walk into the reception area and I'm like ah I I'd like to see Sally McCoy. Well do you have an appointment? No, I don't but

Well, she's busy. I'm like, Okay, well I'll just wait. So I wait.

And I wait. And I'm there. Pretty much All day. Yeah. And finally this guy comes down the stairs that

jump into the front lobby and Like, you know, you've been here a long time. Um, is there anybody helping you? And like, well, no, I really want to talk to this woman, Sally McCoy, but She seems to be very busy. Um, he goes, Well, well maybe I can help you.

This guy's name was Mark Erickson, and he was I think the vice president of Product. Um, I was super disappointed to be talking to him, but He ended up getting my foot in the door at the north face and I ended up meeting Sally McCoy and A really

interesting group of Businesswomen. And that was really my First exposure. to a real job

I mean it it's interesting because you wanted to work for that company. You were a student athlete and you were really passionate. And one of your principles as a as a leader is hire for passion. You can train people to do the business stuff. Don't worry about skills or training. Like hire for passion, which I think is a thousand percent right. Like people have to believe In the mission. of what you're doing. That's more important than anything else. And then you can

Train them. Well, I think that was it. I I they had this thing that needed doing and it was very entrepreneurial. You just had such a broad range of things that you could do. I mean, they strongly believed in the It's easier to be forgiven than to obtain permission rule. Yeah. So it it's a great and right, I I honestly you know, I think about it.

It was such a good uh so the first job I got, strangely enough, was putting together a retail point of sale. catalog for them. So it's gonna be a uh Like a magazine that's gonna sit in their retail stores. I mean, I don't have any skills. I mean like literally zero skills and

There I am. I'm Working with a graphic designer, I'm working with photographers, I'm going on photo shoots, I wrote copy. For uh about product that I didn't really know anything about. Fortunately, there was a lot of supervision. I really wasn't doing all that, but I was sort of the person kind of making sure everything held together in the end. Yeah. And and m by the way, I think while you were at

North Face, you m you met someone who worked there who would eventually become your your life partner, your wife, right? That's right. Actually how I met her is Is Sally had recommended that all of the managers Sally McCoy, the w original woman I want to talk to, had recommended that all the managers take a look and see if they had any job openings. And Dana, uh my wife, happened to have one.

So I actually interviewed with Dana for the job that she had. Yeah. I really, really wanted, even though I was Colossally unsuited for it. Um

So I did not get the job, but more importantly, I I got the girl. Yeah. And the truth of the matter is that my buddy Michael Phillips, who was not an axe murderer, but ended up being a very good man who mentored me, he actually Hooked me up with Fisher Mountain bikes and I applied for a job there. I didn't get the job at Fisher Mountain Bikes, but I My parents raised me right and they told me to make sure to write thank you notes.

And the person they did hire ended up not working out and they called me and said, Hey, the job's yours if you want it. Hm. So I went To work at Fisher, which was one of the first, if not the first mountain bike company. Yeah. I think it was. Gary Fisher, right? Yeah. I mean th these are all pioneers of like outdoor gear, of mountain biking. I had to work with them and I'm really six. Yeah.

And I think good job experience is wasted on the young. That's what I get my short version is that. So I went To work at Fisher and Inside sales, and that was me calling on bike shops.

But suffice it to say, most bike shop guys were not used to having a woman calling them on the phone. I mean you must have really stood out. I mean here we are talking in twenty twenty one You've been in California since nineteen eighty five and I mean your accent

sticks out, right? I mean but you really rarely run into people in Berkeley. with a South Carolina accent. No, I know. Yeah, I think I I stuck out. For good or ill. Um and And and you were

Rhett, I think your brother lived across the bay, south of the airport in Foster City. W eventually, presumably you moved to to Berkeley because you were working for Yes, I had a job with a paycheck. So I could afford to have a a room in a house. W when you were a student athlete, right? You

I imagine We're already thinking about the fact that The clothing made for women athletes was not Well thought out. While you were working at North Base

you were fr from what I I've read, like you were thinking about this like problem that there were there was no good athletic gear for women. Yeah, you know, guy, it's it's funny'cause here's the thing I think about a lot. I mean uh I'm assuming you know about The narrative fallacy, right? Like this idea that

We end up at a certain place and then we make up this really nice story that proceeds logically from point A to point Z. Yeah. It's just It's just a lie, so I I I I want to tell all this to you. But it's gonna be completely misleading that like Oh, and then I went to Yale where I found ill fitting uniforms and and then I went to the North Face and was frustrated but No, I was just

Well I guess I think I used to think To use an old school analogy, I used to think. I was the person operating the flippers on the pinball machine. Uh huh. I'm the ball. Right.

You know, I mean I think that's So I'm having all of these experiences. You were bouncing around. Right. I'm just bouncing around. Five hundred points. Free ball. Yay. Okay. I'm gonna play. I'm gonna keep playing. Um But so so I I I wanna make sure like that part of it is clear. This was I I mean, I am I am not foresighted enough.

to have planned what happened. And just to be clear, almost nobody who's been on the show is. There's no I I can't think of a single story where somebody said You know, I was eighteen, I had this vision, now I'm fifty five and and you know It it it kind of unfolds over time and it's it's like being the ball in the pinball machine. Yes. Exactly.

Um, and I think that's it, you know, so I can look back and I can see the thread. Like I can look back on my Time as a kid, you know, I'm like eight or nine or ten years old, and at the time there was Basically one sports magazine. Yeah. Sports illustrated. And I would go through every single one of them and try and find pictures of women athletes.

And I would painstakingly cut them out and put them on a poster board and have it up in my room. So You could say like it was already in me then. I wasn't thinking like, and therefore I am going to start um a women's athletic apparel company. Right. But the seeds were there early trying to create A vision of what I could be.

What was women's sportswear? in in the eighties. had been making s stuff, but what did that mean? Oh, it was kind of aerobics, right? Jane Fonda. It's kind of that kind of stuff. I mean I think about You know, for me, you when you play college sports, you get all your gear given to you, ill fitting or not. It's given to you. Um, it's given to you, they wash it for you. If it wears out, you get a new one. It's not your concern.

Then I graduate from college and all of a sudden I'm having to buy my own gear. And there's nowhere To find Anything that's

built or designed specifically women. Th you know, there's no Lululemons. There's no there's there's nothing. It literally there is nothing. And really, I mean, if you think about it, it's it's just math, right? Um, Title Nine was passed in seventy two. So I I was in that first generation. There was no market. Wha what was it that

I mean you're twenty seven. And You decide At that age.

Were you frustrated? working in For a bigger company, did you Were you just one of these people who had to be your own Boss, how did you

What do you remember about that time in your life that led you to to that decision? Well I would say probably that, you know, I think about the North Face Now I had great jobs. But I'm twenty six. And I'm like

Boy. These guys are kinda idiots. If they can run these businesses, then anybody can do it. You know,'cause I'm twenty six twenty six and I know Everything of course you do. You know. So

It was Frustration they wouldn't do everything that I wanted them to do. They probably aren't even paying any attention to me. I'm like some entry level person. I don't You know, they're busy. They've actually got important decisions to make, where I'm down here seeing how Idiotic everything is.

So I'm so confident, right? I remember that feeling. Yeah. Yeah. And and I think it my favorite part about it is just like And now, guy I'm the idiot. But you know what? Here's the thing. Ca we're both we're both talking um we're both you know older and we're talking about remembering that feeling. And if you are listening and you are twenty six.

It's okay to think that I'm an idiot or Missy's an idiot because that's the fuel you need. to do something stupid enough to start a business that will ultimately be a good decision. Right. I mean, those are very like People say, Oh, how did you do that when you were twenty six? And I have to say, it's the only time to do it.

Yeah. And and this is nineteen eighty nine, I think, when you decide to start the business. And What what what did you tell yourself? Did you say, you know, I'm gonna start a A women's apparel company 'Cause it's always been on my mind like what

What what how did you describe it to people and they say, So what are you gonna do now, Missy? Well, first I did zero market research. My market research was me and my friends, which let's just be very clear is a very small group of people. You just said, Hey, would you use This Mm.

Hey, you need shorts that fit women, don't you? Yeah, me too. Um, but I had enough to say Okay, there's not enough people in Berkeley, California. To support a retail store just Sure. Women athletes. Yeah.

So I need to do something that's more national, so I can find all the women who need workout and fitness gear. So I did sort of what is the precursor to the internet is that was a mail order catalog. Did you have I mean Let's just Back up for a sec. I mean

Wha what kind of money did you have? to start an apparel company. Presumably you had some savings from your job. Exactly. I had like thirty thousand bucks and I can tell you sort of cash, yeah. Yeah, okay, but what people were telling me is, you know, this time, right? This is uh nineteen eighty nine. And I'm talking to as many people as I could possibly talk to I'm calling anybody that'll talk to me on the phone. Asking them what?

Uh hey, I've decided I want to start a mail order catalog. You have started one and all of them Told me. If you're gonna do this, you need at least a half a million dollars. To start a mail order catalog business.'Cause this was e eighty nine, this is how you marketed. You sent out Or or not millions. Guy. Or not millions. Or not, okay. So people said you need you need at least a half a million bucks to make this work. Yep. That's intimidating. Yeah, yeah. I was like, Well I I I don't have a half a million dollars, I have I have thirty thousand dollars.

So I call up my dad. I did. So Dad, I'm super excited. Caut an idea for a business. Yeah.

The best part about it is That no one else is doing it. Yeah. And he's quiet for a second. And he said

There might be a good reason for that, Missy. When we come back in just a moment. how Missy struggles for months and then years to get Title IX going. And how she discovers the one item of clothing that will give the business

A much needed boost. Stay with us, I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to how I built this. From NPR. Hey, welcome back to how I built this. I'm Guy Roz.

So It's nineteen eighty nine, and Missy has decided to quit her job. and put$30,000 of her own money into launching a mail order catalog for women's sportswear. And that thirty thousand dollars? Is pretty much all she has to spend on everything.

Including the clothes. But the good news is if there are all these Big manufacturers and small manufacturers. who are starting to think about the coming women's market. Now the retail stores are not necessarily buying the stuff because obviously they're worried about that a customer coming in.

Today. But these manufacturers have to think about tomorrow. Um so Lots of manufacturers were starting to what they used to call shrink it and pink it, and I think they still call it that. They take their men's stuff and They do it over in pink and call it a day and make it smaller.

So but the good news about that is there were a a lot of also small brands of women my age or a little bit older. Who were also starting to design and manufacture. Women's athletic apparel. manufacture your your own stuff. You were gonna find it. Right. You can afford it. You're gonna find manufacturers buy their their stuff and then

put it in the ca have a catalog and that that would be it. And Eventually. I'm assuming you you got connected to probably smaller manufacturers. Exactly. Okay. So yes, I could we could have gone into manufacturing and that probably would have cost me a half a million dollars, uh more. I uh an unlimited amount of money. But what I realized pretty quickly is there were enough of these small brands, you know.

Yeah. Pearl Zumi moving comfort was like the first women's running brand. So I started calling on folks like that. And You know, mostly what I did is Well one, again I don't ha I'm operating out of a garage in

the house that I have a room in. You're living in like a group house with other sort of other people. I'm living in a group house And I wanted the cheapest rent, so I got the room that was actually the garage. Nice. So yeah, nice. So I have to go outside to go to the bathroom to come come back in the house, go to the bathroom. Yeah, whatever. And I'm trying to

get these manufacturers to talk to me. But they're not gonna talk to me if I'm meeting them in my garage so I would go down to my brother's office in foster city, I can't remember where he was And I would meet people there and his office so it would be like

Official, right? Pre We Work, you could pre you know. Pre Starbucks really. Exactly. It was pre everything, so how am I gonna fake this? Yeah. Um and and then finally one of them actually's like So what what's going on here? And it ended up being the the sales rep for moving comfort.

And so then I just said, Well, I'm I'm starting and I really I don't have an office. This is my brother's office. And she was very kind to me. She said, Well look, I'm gonna I've met you, I can see you're real Why don't we just come? I'll just come and show you the line. I'll show it to you. in your living room. And moving comfort was one of the first businesses that

I mean they became our bank. I mean, they they were a manufacturer moving comfort. Yep, a brand like Nike, but a small one. And they They were like, Okay, we're willing to work with you. Yeah. And at this point, I know it's mainly you by yourself, right? Actually running the company, but I mean, did you have any help or

Or support? Yes. I just was surrounded by a whole bunch of people. who were willing and fired up about this idea. Who were they?

My teammates, right? I was playing Ultimate Frisbee. My teammates were my early models. And then one of my teammates happened to be A woman who was uh an editor at a women's sports and fitness magazine. So she became my first copy editor. She had a friend who was a graph designer. So she design the catalog for free. I had another friend who I met playing basketball. And she designed because you had to have a corporate package. I don't know why, but that's what you needed. A corporate package was like. A logo, uh letterhead, an envelope, all these things that you had to do. Now, I think. Yeah. You had to have that. So my friend Lisa did it all and threw in a T shirt for ninety dollars. Okay, that sounds like a good price. And the name? The name which is a great name, was it

Had you thought of that then? Yeah. That was a thing that was kinda hanging me up. is I couldn't come up with a name. I come I've gone through like four or five and Somebody had all of'em a you know, I was like, Oh, it'll be cheetah sports because the female cheetah is whatever faster. And then I remember I was up on telegraph Maybe walking around Mo's books or that other bookstore that was right next to it.

And uh I was just looking through books and I picked up this book and it was writing about the history of women's sports in America and I Started reading it. And I was like

Oh. Title Nine Hm. That's what I'll name my and that was it. You know, no one wanted that name. Um unsurprisingly. So I named it Title Nine after

That piece of legislation that Ensuite that I got to play sports all the way through high school and college. And you were the idea was you were gonna sell like like running shorts and and tights and things like that. Yeah, well

Remember, the customer was me. So very narrow group of people, but it was me I had um We had tights, we had running shorts, we had cycling shorts. We really didn't have much in the way of tops because you got all your tops for free. Uh the races and the tournaments that you went to. Okay. I was not a merchant. I mean it it's it's interesting because today, you know, Tell Line is is

very well known for sports prize. Um but that was not Part like you weren't thinking, Oh, we're gonna sell sports bras. Well So I put together this assortment of stuff and it's a tiny little flyer of stuff and

I really do not know anything about the apparel industry. I I knew what I was able to glean at the North Face. But I'm just putting assembling a group of merchandise that I can get people to sell to me on credit. And then at the last minute I got in touch with a sales rep who was representing two women. who had invented I didn't know this at the time, but it invented the first sports bra. And

And I'm super flat chested. We're gonna say Double A on a good day. So That's an afterthought for me, but this guy it was a guy because most of the sales reps of that time were guys. Right. Um he he says, You know, I really think you oughta

Put these sports bras in there. And by the way, were sports bras widely used in in the Canadian I don't know. No, I was like, So what did women do who were a women athletes do? For support. They wear two and three bras, guy. Oh wow. So anyway, as almost an afterthought, we bought some sports bras and we'd done all the shooting, it was all in color. And so I just had time to take some real quick

Black and white. Photos. And we put'em on what was then called the order form. This is in the catalogue. Yeah, in in the catalog and then there's an order form in there. Yeah and so I put'em in there. And

I think we sent out. Like Fifteen thousand Catalogs. And and by the way, I'm looking at a photo some photos from that first catalog and Um it is not a slick

Uh production at all. Uh I mean it's cool'cause I uh all the all the models are um are athl women athletes and They're not like glamour shots or ac uh some action shots, but they're very authentic and These were like these were your friends. Yeah.

Yep. I all like it. People I mostly that I played Ultimate Frisbee with or went road riding or mountain biking with, or that I worked with at the North Face. So you've got the catalog up and running and I'm assuming you had to order a bunch of stuff with your The s the small amount of capital you had and just

Hold it. In your In your whereage. Yeah. And and hope hoping that some that it would all be sold.

Yeah. And our suppliers were our bankers, so I would Order stuff, let's say in November and then I would say I'd like for you to ship it to me in May and then I would like to pay you in September.

Wow. I mean it's a little bit of a a Ponzies game that you're hoping. You're just hoping some catalogs fifteen or twenty thousand catalogs. And and h how did you do? How many orders did you get from those cat um Those catalogs and then I'm just Waiting.

For the phone to ring. Yeah. And Waiting. And

Waiting. Okay. And I think we got a whopping maybe fifteen orders Maybe seven of'em were from someone that I did not know. Wow. That's for mailing out. Over twenty thousand catalogs. That's the hit rate.

Super sexy. That's crazy. But but that makes statistical sense. You gotta right? You're gonna your hit rate is gonna be. It did not make statistical it didn't make any sense to me. You're correct. But one thing that I did notice in this That all of the people that I didn't know. And many of the ones I did know. Put a sports bra on their order. And so

Well I may not have been The quickest study You don't have to tell me twice. And I realized like Wow. Sports bras, that is probably now I know the most essential piece of sports equipment for the average American woman.

Yeah. Th this is nineteen eighty nine, the year you start, um I I know that the first four years it was like Really rough. Well not only did you have

you're dealing with like cash flow issues. But that was the year the the earthquake, the big Bay Area earthquake. I remember, you know, I remember exactly. Because

I was so relieved there was an earthquake because we were going through the financials. Yeah. Uh not to make light of the earthquake at all, but I just s I mean, it just is how much the finances weighed on me. Because you were watching Not only Europe.

Right. And just kinda, you know, the ways you think about so We did the first catalogue, it went poorly. saw a little opportunity for sports bras, so I was gonna make the most of that that I could. But I was also even then trying to figure out like, okay, how do I kinda get out of this and just go back and get a job again? I can't just quit after one, but I'll do a second one and it'll be super super cheap. It'll just be like a folded up piece of paper. Yeah. It's like super cheap. So I did a super cheap folded up piece of paper. And It did a little better, even though it was a little worse.

You were from from what I read. You would Order a bunch of stuff. And then you would sell it and then some money would come in. And then you would use all that money to send out to order more stuff and then send out

the stuff to people who ordered it. So you were constantly out of cash. Like every Right? Yep. It was like s cash in and then out. No cash. Constantly. constantly had a cash and I remember a like Two times a year I would be

And even now I sort of have sort of stress reactions around these two times of year. It's a time when we're building up a lot of inventory. Yeah. Um, and you know, there are these two times when You have invested a lot of money in marketing, you've invested a lot of money in inventory. And sales Or

Going to come, you hope they're going to come. But you don't know if they are and it Kinda two times a year, I just I'd just be done. I'll just like You want to quit. Yeah.

At one point in those in the first time. I think maybe four years, you were like two hundred thousand dollars in debt. Yes. That was a lot of duh. But you were thinking all right. What

What could I do for a living? Right. What can I do for a living where clearly I am self unemployable? And how did you deal with that stress? Did you Did you get depressed? Did you

Did you get anxious? Did you lash out? Well, Dana actually had a real job and a good job, so her paycheck was supporting both of us. Oh wow. Um so uh by this time, you know, I I wasn't taking any money of the business. She was she was Only your girlfriend at the time and and supporting you. Yeah, well, you know, that that's a matter of laws or a matter of practice, right?

Because we we actually couldn't be officially married until believe it or not, something like Two thousand twelve or fifteen, I mean, which is crazy. Um So what would I do in terms of the stress relief? And Dana reminds me of this all the time because it's

You you never get out of that. I mean, we're always in it for the rest of building a business. You have those times and My solution then was to call my dad'cause he was Whenever I talked with him, he always just had like the one good piece of advice that I needed to hold on to. Um, I remember very early on when I was ready to hang it up. And I called him and I was just like I Dad, I just

It's just it's not happening. I I can't learn fast enough. I just don't think I can do it. And then he he would just go to the business and he's like, Well, tell me about your customers. Tell me about how much it costs you to get a new customer now. How much did it cost you to get a customer?

This time last year. Mm. And he would just find the successes. Well So I think That's the thing is those little lifelines that

That someone can offer you. Yeah. Um, it's not like, Oh, and then we got a vest investor and I got a million dollars and everything was fine. Yeah. It's like no, there were a lot of little lifelines all along the road and continue to be. I read and I don't know how much of a big deal this was, but I I did see a reference to A flood that destroy all the inventory.

Was that in your w when you were in the garage? In the garage, yeah. Mm-hmm. Wha how did a flood get in there? I What happened was We had installed some racks in

The garage. And by we I mean Dana. She's handy but not Super handy.

And They probably weren't installed in the most professional manner. So They came crashing down. In the middle of the night, but we're not in the garage.

We're asleep, we don't hear and then there's a Rainstorm. And you know, like Berkeley garages, there's Just the order swooped up in there and

I think it was about that point where I decided it was time for us to get real office space. I'm like, this is ridiculous. We need to stop doing this. Yeah. It's probably shortly after that that we moved into Again, another converted warehouse just uh it was next to an ice cream. manufacturer, also a small Entrepreneurial led, and every morning it would smell like chocolate when I came in. So everything that we shipped out started smelling like chocolate.

Alright, so those those first four years There were moments where you really were like very seriously thinking that this was not gonna work out. But I guess around nineteen ninety three. You guys turned a profit for the first time. This is four years in.

Probably not a huge profit, but a profit nonetheless. Yes. And What was that the result of? Was it w was it you were just getting sort of better at managing things and more experienced. Did you hire people? What what happened? Well

You know, what I would say is It's just like staying in the game, right? I mean that's just the best way I can describe it. It's just for me, I'm just like I'm gonna just stay in the game here. I'm gonna kinda keep hitting little singles. And I think it's it kind of goes to basically a business philosophy is just sort of fail faster to succeed sooner. And You know, if you're gonna make big mistakes, those take a long time. Little mistakes don't take a very long time. You can make a lot of little mistakes really fast. So I think it was just because we didn't have anybody

Really until we were over forty million dollars, we didn't have anybody who had retail experience, apparel experience, marketing experience, men we had Everybody Was just Tru believers, product users that are really interested in women's outdoor gear and athlet apparel. That's it.

I think that the story of Title Nine is a story of hitting singles. Which is actually A great strategy, right? And and a strategy That you can really only do Without

having outside investors. Right. You can't do that if you've got people who expect a ten X return in five to ten years. You you you can't just hit singles. Because no one's gonna be that patient.

Right. venture money and and you know. Did that even On your radar? Was that ever even anything you You considered or or thought about or was it just not even

Something that you thought was a An option. I think you always ha it always has to stay on your radar because you never know what's gonna happen, right? But it's never a real option. I I I think the time I was most aware of how impossible it would be to go out and get investors is uh we had a president that the first president we had

who came in and Estelle de Muse, she did a great job running the business. She She'd done everything. She'd bought businesses, sold businesses, and she came in and ran the business for a while. And I said, you know, somebody contacted me from one of the big investment banks, I can't remember who now, and I told her Silver, I said, Would you like to talk with this guy. Would you like us to talk to this guy? She's just like, sure, let's do it. Let's do it.

So the guy comes and I'm meeting with him first. I really literally cannot remember his name anymore, but he comes into the office. And I'm talking to him. And guy literally The longer I talk. The more nervous he is getting.

As if he has walked into some sort of alternate universe that does not speak his language. What were you saying? Just about how we you know, people wanna riding by the door on scooters, so there's Chaos. We play a lot of games at work. So there's a lot of stuff going on around. So if you walked into a foreign country, you know, maybe I'm talking about every year we do something called the Title IX Olympics and we divide up into teams and we play sports together for a day. And people you know, get hurt, hopefully not badly, but you know, we we play hard. And that just didn't work in his investment banker mind, right? And then Estelle came in. And she sits down.

And she starts talking to him. And that guy was so visibly relieved. And just talking to her, I just was I don't even know the language to talk. Yeah.

So to answer your question, do we consider it yes. Um Would it have to be someone who is very different from me to really get that deal done? Yes. But By the same token, what I would say is if you hit singles

Which we do and we're good at. You're not gonna hit a grand slam. Yeah. And that's Just you need to make your peace with that. And I think I would take the staying in the game of singles to

Striking out a whole bunch and every once in a while getting a grand slam. W once you became proferable. Right. And again, it wasn't like buckets of money, but probably profitable enough where you could

Pay yourself a little bit of a salary. When were you able to actually hire People And pay them a salary. Every time someone asks me that I'm taken back to my own

decisions around that and how hard it was. You know, first we just had people who would help us out and volunteer. And then I remember, and this is probably one of the conflicts, and maybe something about being a female entrepreneur, I really wanted to go home to South Carolina for Christmas. And The phones were gonna ring and people were gonna wanna place orders and return product and I wanted to be in South Carolina and I couldn't be because of the phones. And this was before call forwarding and all the stuff that you could do now.

So I had a teammate and I said hey And she lived in California. I was like, would you be up for Mind in the store while I go home for Christmas and She said sure. And I said, You know what, if it works out, then maybe you can keep doing some work.

And so that was really how I hired my first. Actual paid employees. Renee Thomas Jacobs. We're still good friends. She ended up being our first president, um but it felt like a Big step like there's Who can I afford to do this or

Should I just be working harder myself? When we come back in just a moment. Title IX keeps hitting singles until Missy makes some miscalculations. company suddenly finds itself. in a swamp.

Stay with us. Guy Raz, and you're listening to how I built this. From NPR. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. It's the mid-1990s, and Title IX has only just become profitable.

And Missy is still running the company on a shoestring. And still looking for ways? The way we did it is the old fashioned way, you know, we went to a lot of races and you know, tournaments and we would sell stuff like our excess inventory. We would sell there and we would build up our mailing list by doing that. And then

the hard work of building A customer file, you know, selling people A sports bra, selling a woman a sports bra, she can't do without and you earn her trust on that and she comes back to you. for all of her athletic apparel needs. And and and to this day, I would say

That we are much better. at keeping our customers than we are at acquiring new ones. That's just always and I think that's again that sort of bootstrappy hitting singles, you know, our customers know That we get them, that we're product users and product testers. So that once they find us. They stay with us for a long time, but it's not like we're going out there.

And we're gonna do a hundred million dollar marketing campaign that's gonna net us a whole bunch more new customers all at once. That's just never been the model. Wha was that ever uh was it always designed to be a direct'cause it w this was a direct to consumer business from the beginning. Was it was that the model from the beginning? Did you ever think, you know, maybe we'll do a collaboration with you know, m Macy's or something. You know, I think we just weren't sophisticated I wasn't sophisticated enough to think like that. I was just

I want to control everything that I can. I know it's a delusion, but I still want to control it, right? I mean, certainly people propose them, but I I just couldn't uh again, remember, we're mostly selling other people's brands at this point. Yeah. But with Title Nine on it, or was it was No, it's just with uh Whatever brand it was. Whatever brand it was. Okay. And and I guess eventually, like like eight years in or something, you you finally opened up a store, like a a brick and mortar store Uh in Berkeley.

Yep. And um What's interesting to me is today we're looking at the Women's apparel. market. And it's enormous, right? Like you really are the pioneer. You really

Yeah. Yep. With title nine. And this is long before Lululemon or Athleta or outdoor voices, any of those existed. at that point, eight years in Did people get it or was it still a curiosity?

You know what the most incredible statistic about that first store was? The amazing thing about that store. Was that Over fifty percent of the customers that came to that store. Came from more than two hours away. Wow. Who who were they were they

Were they um uh uh high school athletes, college athletes, um non um Just women that want to work out. What age were you gonna be able to get the week. I would say probably We think of our customers sort of like that. thirty to fifty age range. And it was pretty much that then as well. You know, they're not They have some disposable income because You know, at that point

direct or ecom wasn't as big a thing. There very few people were willing to buy something sight unseen. Yeah. But what we found mostly was People We're coming from all over the country. Yeah. They were flying to SFO.

And they would come to our store. So we were really looking for that. woman who is in the workforce now and is coming into her own, either in aerobic studios or, you know, in the outdoors and needs to find the gear that works for. Yeah. The second piece though I will say Is our sports bra business? ended up there was a small piece of that that ended up being

A big part. of our business to high school and college athletes, even now we have a lot of mother daughter first trips to buy sports bras um happened at our retail stores. I I wonder, you know, um One of the it's it's interesting'cause w uh I've heard you describe a low point.

in your career. As a leader. maternity leave. Because obviously you were Uh incredibly overjoyed at the birth of your first child. Um you were thirty seven. You

You had a very difficult long labor And you Uh you just decided that you were the CEO and the founder and that you didn't want to take a long leave. That you you were back in the office pretty soon after the birth of your daughter. Yeah.

And I think you know, that's th it's a little bit of a hero complex there, right? you know, the business was doing well. I I was still running the business at that point, but the business was doing well enough. But you know, I mean that's the thing about running a business, you get so much positive reinforcement, especially if you're The founder, owner, entrepreneur, you've done every job, you know all the ans. And then I suppose there's something about like wow, I know mom, I don't know any answers. I think I'd rather go back to the place where I know answers. I mean, if you know, you want me to get into sort of the psychological underpinnings of that.

choice. You know I have this picture Uh it's like a Polaroid of Gilly, so she comes to the office with me and when she was a newborn. Yeah, yeah, really young and she's all like swaddled and she's on one of those spinny chairs like spinny roly chairs and she's just lying there all swaveled up, like right on the chair, and there's no one around.

I'm like Huh. But I think I needed to have that and realized like wow that's really That's really screwed up. I I I gotta do better. But then I think now, um, when people talk about work life balance, I think

Іно, дар'їно сучь баланс. If you want to do something really great, whether that's Be a great mom. Um, or be a great entrepreneur or a great business person. You're really gonna have to

Dig in and have a lot of imbalance for a while. But it always has to flip back. We're gonna ride there's gonna be a teeter totter. Yeah. Sometimes it's gonna be, I am really digging in on work, and sometimes it's gonna be I am really digging in on home.

And then for those ordinary days, hopefully I get home in time for dinner every day. I think around two thousand you started to design and manufacture your own stuff. And think today about half of what you sell Yeah. design stuff. Um how how how involved were were you in

In the designs. I mean what I would say about us is Mostly what we are And I think you have to be if you're gonna be owner operated. We are very opportunistic. So the very first thing we ended up manufacturing ourselves was a sports bra.

And it was because I found a sports bra. that someone else was selling And It was kind of a passion project for her. She was maybe a yoga teacher, and And she couldn't find a sports bra she liked, so

She made this one and ended up being a top selling sports bra for us for many, many years. But At a certain point she decided she was more interested in fitness instruction, understandably, than in making uh sports bras. So she said hey I want to get out of this business. Would you like To buy.

the rights and designs for this we called it the frog bra. And I said sure. Um, and then she coached us up on on how to get into the manufacturing business.

Basically, in in the two thousands, there was an absolute explosion. In women's apparel brands. Lululemon. Athleta. Now there's outdoor voices. Nike and and Adidas are making this stuff. Um We had Chip Wilson on the show. We we had Tyler Haney of Outdoor Voice on the sho on the show before a few years ago.

You started this category. You were the Lonely voice in the wilderness. Saying hey There is a market for women's athletic wearing But

These Other brands. Which started after you. Bigger very fast.

Yes. How did you What did you think about that? I mean w did you feel like you were under pressure to like compete and to grow faster and to I don't know, was it frustrating to not

Get the recognition that That maybe Ye you felt You guys deserved. So kinda in the nicest way possible what you're saying is why'd you let all those uh late players come in and squash you like a bug? I'm not saying that. No. You know, I just no, but it's it's spot on. It's spot on. Um you know

So I played basketball in college, and I have to tell you, I never played better basketball than when I was having to compete for a spot. Yeah. So, I mean, I think that having more folks in the field makes helps us all raise our game. Um, at the same time, I'd say we're In some ways we're competing on the same game, but in other ways We're not. Um to be really honest, i if Title I were a publicly traded company

Someone should fire me right now. I mean That that's just the facts of it. They should fire me because The fact is the sole purpose of a publicly traded company or a private equity backed company is to maximize shareholder value in purely financial terms. And

Plain and simple, I haven't done that. But I would say that at Title Man I have, I think we all have. Always measured that. This idea of value creation.

much more broadly. And I think m my philosophy, and and I think it's all of our philosophy now, can probably be summed up with one of my my favorite sayings, uh not all things that count can be counted. Yeah. I mean you built a business that Didn't it was bootstrapped is bootstrapped. You never brought in outside investors, so you didn't have to Make decisions that

That You know, they wanted you to make. But there's a trade off, right? You don't you don't explode, you don't go on the New York Stock Exchange, you don't You're not A billionaire.

Yeah, I mean I think it You know, when I think about that guy, I think about how this choice that we made and that we remake every day. it is informed by our business practices uh and it's everything from the suppliers we choose to Who we choose to hire, I mean, probably in the most important way is that we have chosen up and coming female executives rather than some

Plug and play C level. Actually, I have to say one of the things I'm still very proud of is that we grew the business from probably zero to about fifty million. with not one person that knew anything about retail or apparel Or business at all. I mean it's just like pure passion about women.

Um and the transformative power of sport. And you know, we have this pitch fest that we do twice a year for up and coming women run brands. I mean, I am filled up by seeing these women come in and grow their businesses. We share resources and and sometimes even finances with these kinds of businesses and and and we're all stronger and better for it. So

It's just a different game. You um We been quoted as saying. That's the same. Around twenty fourteen, the company had climbed out of a pretty b

pretty s significant downturn and I'm assuming that that was probably connected to the recession. But you said that S it was solely self inflicted. And I wonder I mean You know

Maybe some maybe some personnel decisions or or strategic decisions. Led to uh some rough years. Yes, very rough.

You know I was a kid, my I Something bad happened to somebody and a self inflicted wound and I'd t talk to my mom about it, I'd say Well, it was their own fault. And my mom would say, Well, those are the worst kind. I mean, and I would say that I have a a lifetime of the worst kind of self inflicted wounds. Um

Some of the biggest mistakes are people mistakes. Um, and mostly they are my own failures and leadership that negatively impacted. Um Team members or the whole team. And twenty fourteen fifteen, while it had its share of people mistakes, I think it was really a failure on On my part to recognize how quickly we needed to shift.

from a print and bricks and mortar model to a digital model. To like social media marketing and things like influencers and things like that. Exactly. All of that. And it's you know I mean it's one of those things where, you know, if a company's been around a long time, it it has a legacy. Yeah. You know, and that's a great thing, but it's also A challenging thing. I couldn't figure out how to rebuild the organization around digital.

And I think I set the team up for maybe the only time in the history of the company where. We were not all playing off the same sheet of music. There were folks who were very committed to the print model. You were still a catalogue, primarily a catalogue. Yes. And you can't you can't be today.

No, it's just too late. No, we it's just it's not happening. Um don't get me wrong, print is an awesome secret weapon to have. Yeah. They're they're a part of your marketing mix, but in twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen. Yeah,'cause I mean maybe they were Eighty percent. Marketing mix. Now when you consider our digital, you consider our retail. Prints only thirty percent of the marketing mix. Yeah. You know, so a dramatic change in six years.

But I remember talking to Dane at one point and I was like, You know, I think I think we're gonna have to take out a a mortgage on the house and I just need you to tell me that That you're Willing to go back to work. So you were so you had really Like the fortunes of the business had had kind of reversed in in a sense. Yeah.

Brutal. So so revenue, sales figures, everything was was declining. Yep. Inventory. Way too much inventory. And of course that's gonna create stress.

For everybody. Yep. But in those moments. I mean We have

Good. People. And I I wish I could have been the coach. that they needed me to be. And I I I think I'm I'm getting better at it. I would say that the progress is slow, but I think

You know, the lessons that I have to learn now are the lessons of leadership more than they are entrepreneurship. Yeah. I guess the those sort of that that

I don't know if I said dark days, it sounds too dramatic, but the Kind of the downturn. led you to eventually to to bring on a new President of the company. Johnny Lynn a a man.

And you m had for the most part. women executives um was hiring Johnny um And he's still I believe still the president of the company. Yep. Did you have pause? Did anybody have pause and say, Wait, we're a women's apparel company Is this the right fit?

Oh, hell yeah. There's a lot of pause. Yeah. Yeah, man. Thank you for being gentle, but hell yeah. Um You know, sometimes the right woman for the job is a man. Right. Um and I think that with Johnny Lynn, he was just what I I feel like every time we have had a president leaning the business, they have been exactly what we needed at the time they came in. Yeah. We need a diversity of ideas about how to run this business. And

Johnny is going to bring that to us and he is Such a good leader, and I felt confident knowing that I wasn't gonna be leading the company on a daily basis that the next person we needed To lead with someone who could build a great executive team. Yeah. Um, so they could lead long past when I'm here.

Um You are a retail business. I think you have Fourteen or fifteen stores. I think we have like

Eighteen store. Um And um You kinda come out of this Rough period and you're back to

You know. Uh I think you hit a hit a hundred million dollars and then COVID hits. Which Absolutely devastating.

Certainly initially. For retail. Um you had to close all your stores. I think I think Store sales account for like twenty percent of your total business and that was it. Zero percent.

And uh That's a lot of money. I I I read that you guys had six weeks of cash in the bank in twenty twenty. Yeah, you know We have to shut all of the stores.

We have to shut Our headquarters And then probably the most challenging part for me. was our distribution center, which like Amazon, because it's selling goods that are shipping directly home. could remain open and also

If we shut that, there is literally no cash. So Shelter and place comes. Mm. Sales drop like a rock. We're in the middle of what should have been our busiest season. We should have done about ten million dollars in sales and we lost five million dollars of sales in the last two weeks of March alone.

Well. We had Six weeks of cash on hand. I mean How long? I mean, it it was March.

And it was really dramatic. And I remember people were scrambling for for PPP loans and I know you guys received one and and it was It was a mess at the beginning, it was in May and and yeah. figuring out how we're gonna get one and Um

When did you start to see Signs That's Sales. Starting to pick up again.

Well I've been pushing for us to move from print to digital. Um for like six years. But Covid. pushed us probably as far as we been in six years and

Six months. Um Everything moved digitally, stuff that had been paper based was now online. So I really started first seeing the team just step up to the challenge of converting us to a fully our accounting team went entirely paperless. Um which again we've been pushing for our design team

uh presented all their decks online. And then Sales start to come back. maybe in August or September.

В кор We didn't recover the year. We ended up in negative. territory. But I would say we made up a lot of ground on it. So much so that by I would say July we felt confident everybody had taken uh

twenty five percent or more pay cut. Wow. We were able to bring everybody back to full pay and then we were also able to give back to people the pay cuts they had taken. Wow. How have you

H has your business recovered? Now are you back to Two thousand nineteen or even even higher. Yes. Um so we're in the women's sports and fitness uh Business, right? We sell workout gear and sweatpants and stuff to do outdoors, and people are doing that in droves. So retail is still

Coming back. It's not quite there, but our direct which we're before Covid, we were about eighty percent, e com and twenty percent. retail. Then we were a hundred percent ecom and zero percent retail. Now we've

probably worked our way up to that eighty five percent ecom and fifteen percent retail. But a bigger number overall. I mean, Missy, you've been at this for thirty plus years it's been I know incredibly

Fulfill their grind. I mean at some point and and I'm sure you've been approached in the past, but at some point There will be A moment where somebody Yeah, says hey, we want to

And You'll be in a position to decide whether to do that. Um when I mean What do you think? I mean, at some point do you think you would

You would entertain that? Well Guy, you are asking me the question That the accountants and the lawyers have been asking me since what day one. Right. What is the exit strategy? Right.

Which you don't have to answer'cause it's your company. No, I think it's I I think I'm coming more to what the exit strategy is as I I'm you know, I couldn't have answered it. It's important. It's absolutely incumbent upon me to be able to answer that question. If I want Title Nine to outlast this generation of leaders, I need to be able to answer that question. Um, and the thing that I know is that my goal is to get it in the hand of the next generation. of female owner operators. I do not need a liquidity event because of the way we have grown it.

At this point, we have zero debt. We have zero outside investors. So it is a good spot. for someone to come in and be able to earn seat at the ownership table. And that is my hope is that At some point over the next ten to fiftin's.

I'll be able to pass title nine on to the next group of owner operators. Who I hope will do it. A whole heck of a lot Better than I have. So I am not

thinking actively about An exit strategy, I am thinking actively about leadership succession. Yeah, fair enough. Um Missy, when you think about

journey w what you've gotten to.'Cause I mean, you had A really tough few years and then there was, you know, kind of stability and growth and the brick and mortar and then this period of stagnation and then growth again and then the pandemic, which was, of course, uh probably the most trying time of your

Entire tenure. And then once again, you know growth. Did did you I mean just reflecting on that. I mean did you ever Could you ever have imagined when you started this in the garage in in in eighty nine as a twenty six, twenty seven year old.

That Thirty plus years on. It would look something like this. Was that? Could you envision that? Well

I I wanna say no and I want to say maybe a little bit yes in only the sort of frivolous way that a twenty year old might like We need to start the women's version of Nike. You know, and then once I got around to it.

No. I I don't think I ever could have envisioned What The work has become And the people, right, that I've gotten to work with.

I'm not sure I really had expectations to be honest. I was like, this is gonna be a fun adventure. And I think that's really when I think about business, it's the great game of business. Yeah. You know, we're not curing cancer, guy. I mean So it can it can be fun. There can be times when it is hard and you take your losses, but

It's a great game and it's been a great adventure. So I I hope I have a Few more adventures left in me. How much do you tribute? your success to to to the work you put in, the really hard work you put in and and how much

It has to do with luck. I mean you had some lucky breaks early on and I mean course meeting Dana and like I Who helped you kinda like learn about the bike business and then and then North Base and meeting the right people at the right time, but also

Obviously. There was a a grind there too. So how much of Of those things to you. Would you attribute to the success of the business.

Yeah, right. It's percentages. It's not binary. It's not all luck or all hard work. It's it's percentages. And I think You know, if you want to talk about the luckiest things that probably had sort of the absolutely necessary parts of it. I had to be a young woman.

growing up in the seventies and eighties, not in the forties and fifties. That's luck. I probably had to grow up in a family. That was Encouraging me to be an entrepreneur, even though that might not be something young women in the South did at the time. That's luck.

I had to grow up And not be battling Abject poverty. Yeah. That's luck. So when you look at all those very lucky things and then you add on to it all of the things, the happenstance meetings and the people that offered me a hand up, I mean, I'd say

It's ninety percent luck. But then what I would say is the part that I can control. Is the ten percent. Yeah. That's work. And so it may only be ten percent, but I'm gonna work as hard as I can to control that ten percent.

That's Missy Park. Founder, CEO. of title mine. By the way, earlier this year, the company wrote the biggest check in its thirty-two year history. One million dollars to the US women's national soccer team.

Just to pay their players more money so they'd get a little closer. to making what the male soccer players make. And this wasn't for a fancy sponsorship deal or anything like that. It was just A straight up gift. a straight pass through to the players. We're not asking. I don't want a I said, like I don't want to have a beer with the US women's national soccer team. I honestly this I'm sure they would buy you a beer though.

They might buy me a beer. I d I do have a Budweiser beer glass with Megan Rapino on it. I think that'll do. So it's kinda like I'm having a beer with her. Hey thanks so much for listening to the show this week. If you're not yet a subscriber, please do subscribe or follow us wherever you get your podcasts. If you want to write to us or email addresses hibt at npr.org. If you want to follow us on Twitter or at HowI BuiltThis or My Account, at Guy Raz.

You can find us on Instagram at HowIbuiltThisNPR or at guy.ros. This episode was produced by JC Howard with music composed by Ramteen Arablui. It was edited by Neva Grant with research help from Claire Muroshima. Our production staff includes Casey Herman, Juny, Elaine Coates, Farah Safari, Liz Metzger, and Harrison BJ Choi. Our intern is Katie Seifer. Jeff Rogers is our executive producer.

I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening. to how I built this. This is NPR.

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