Steven Sashen's Guerrilla Marketing Campaign: 50K Bookmarks in Bookstores

0:00This show is brought to you by the Global Talent Co, a marketing leader's best friend in these times of budget cuts and efficient growth.

0:07Brett Stapper:We help marketing leaders find, hire, vet, and manage amazing marketing talent for 50 to 70 % less than their U.S. and European counterparts. To book a free consultation, visit globaltalent.co. Hey, everyone, and welcome back. Today, we're speaking with Steven Sashen, founder and chief barefoot officer of Zero Shoes. Steven, how are you? Well, I'm upset that you rock the five o 'clock shadow way better than I do. This looks like crap. You look good. So it wasn't good. Tell us about the shoes behind you. We make footwear that is designed for human feet. So lightweight, bending, flexing. So the simple thing is nice, wide foot-shaped toe box instead of squeezing your toes together.

0:46No elevated heel to mess with your posture. Really, really flexible to let all the bones and joints in your feet do what you're supposed to do. A sole that's designed to give you feedback so your brain knows what you're stepping on or in so you can move better. But also, of course, the protection you want. And we've got a whole line of 60 different casual and performance shoes, boots, and sandals that people wear for everything we've taken a walk to literally playing on the NBA and WNBA courts.

1:08Brett Stapper:You must be an athlete. I feel like there's no way you sit behind a desk all day. I am a master's All-American sprinter. So for men over, now I'm 63. Men over 60, I'm like one of the top 20 fastest guys in the country. What's your like go-to measurement of speed? 60 meter indoor, 100 meter outdoor. And I actually a better 60-meter runner than 100-meter runner. So there's all-American times, and that's kind of a frame of reference. So the all-American time for men my age, for the 60, indoors, 8, 9, and I run about an 8, 3, 8, 4, which is actually all-American time for people like 5 or 10 years younger than me.

1:41And the 100, I run like a 13, 2-ish, 13, 3.

1:44Brett Stapper:What drives you to want to do that? We were just talking pre-interview. I told you I do distance running. People always ask, like, why do you do this? So for you, why? Why are you doing that? You know what? It's like going to Vegas. You can never do it perfectly. So, I mean, running fast is fun. I was always, you know, the fastest kid, blah, blah, blah, until I went to junior high and my best friend was faster than me. And it wasn't a good sprinting coach. So I focused on gymnastics. I was an All-American gymnast then. I got back into sprinting 18 years ago when someone told me there's a whole master's track and field circuit.

2:12And it's not fun if there's not a reason to do it for me. So competing is really fun for me. So that gives me a reason to do it. And getting better at it is also fun for me. And like at the end of a race, people go, how'd you do? And I go, you just want the number or can I give you the excuse as well? So the intermittent reinforcement component of never being able to do it right. It's like, oh, that time my start was good, but my transition phase was shit. I mean, there's always a something and that's literally addictive.

2:37Brett Stapper:At what point in your running journey did you say, I need to go build some better shoes? Two years into the getting back into sprinting after I, I mean, the first two years was just injury, injury, injury. And a friend of mine suggested that I try running barefoot. And when you run barefoot, saying people should do it, but when you do it, good form feels good. Bad form hurts. And my first barefoot run hurt. And when I figured out how to make it not hurt, my injuries went away. My running got faster, better, easier, and lighter. And I wanted something that gave me that barefoot-like experience because my wife got tired of me coming into our white carpet house with my dirty-ass bare feet.

3:10And I got tired of arguing with restaurants about whether it was legal to be there in bare feet. It is, by the way. and I knew about the Tatumara Indians who ran in sandals made from tire scraps laced to their feet. So I made my version of that. And then people kept asking me for more and more and more. And finally, a guy was writing a book on barefoot running. And he said, if you had a website for your sandal making hobby, I'd put you in the book. And I've been an internet marketer since 1992 and I built like 500 websites. So I rush home and I pitched this brilliant opportunity to my wife who tells me it's a horrible, stupid thing to do and it's do not build a website.

3:41And I told her I wouldn't. And then she went to bed and I built a website.

3:46Brett Stapper:I love that. I love that book. Let's see how good my memory is. You know, I have color coded. I believe it's a blue cover with yellow titles. Let's see. Yes, you're correct. Is that right? Yeah. Do you have it on the shelf behind you in the blue book section? Yeah, don't get back there, Star. That was like, I just started running during COVID like so many other people. And like, that was one of those books. My approach when I got into running was I'm going to absorb as much as humanly possible. So I got into like all of the Reddit communities and I just bought all the best running books. And that was for sure one that got me fired up.

4:16It's over your right shoulder next to a white book. Yeah, a little note, it's over there. Nice. That was weird.

4:24Brett Stapper:That's such a good book. I love that book. Any other running books that have had a big impact? Not really, but more importantly, my wife is not a runner or an athlete at all. And she found the book Born to Run fascinating because it really is about the tatamara and how they run and how they live and about the science behind natural movement. Because we're not talking about footwear. We're talking about optimal human functioning. For example, you have 200 ,000 nerve bendings in the sole of each foot, so your brain knows what you're stepping on or in, so it can help you move properly with the 33 bones and joints and 110 muscle ligaments and tendons.

4:55And if you can't feel anything, you can't use those correctly, and that makes you unstable and prone to fall and actually injury prone in many, many ways. And how much can you feel through a big, thick shoe with an inch of padding? That's what can lead over time to getting, basically, your brain says, if you're not going to give me the information, I'm going to do two things. land harder to try to get some information. And if that doesn't work, I'm just going to stop paying attention. And then you become less and less mobile over time. And then eventually that's why, you know, trip and fall accidents are one of the number one killers of elderly people.

5:22So I don't even know where that went, but there was some answer to your question, I think.

5:27Brett Stapper:You were an internet marketer in 92. What was it like during internet marketing? Wild, wild west. Herge engine marketing was really easy, although I was one of the first people to literally like me and a very small number of people figured it out. Just take whatever keywords you wanted, write them over and over and over and over and over in super tiny text in white with a white background so no one could see them. And then write a couple of articles, put them on a website called Easy in Articles, or there was one other, and then you're done. But there was no way to monetize it. So I outranked anyone who had an infomercial, I outranked them for their name.

5:59I outranked Tony Robbins through Tony Robbins. But there was no way to make money off of that. So that was just like playing around and seeing what you could do.

6:05Brett Stapper:Was it obvious back then in 92? Like, did you know this internet thing was going to be real big? I like watching those old videos of people like making fun of the internet, saying it's not going to be a thing. What was like the sentiment? No, here's where I thought it was going to be a thing. My best friend who started one of the first internet marketing agencies before that happened, there was two fun moments. One, we're in my apartment bemoaning, you know, why would someone buy business.com? It's just a generic word. That makes no sense. And P.S. Who has$70 for a domain name? But a little while later, he's working for an ad agency where they had the first copy of Photoshop, a beta copy.

6:37and this like, you know, multi-washing machine-sized photorealistic printer. And he said, watch this. And he grabbed an image in Photoshop, did a step repeat of the image. So it looked like there was just multiple of it going off into the distance. Printed it out photorealistically. And it looked like a real picture of this thing. And I went, we're all screwed. So, you know, and I felt a similar thing about the internet. Basically, in the early days of the internet, so I had a software company I started in 1992. and I said, the internet is just Jerry Springer for people who are with an education.

7:09And then it just became Jerry Springer.

7:11Brett Stapper:My wife didn't know Jerry Springer. She's like five or six years younger than me and she didn't know Jerry Springer. I'm like, come on, I grew up with this. I think there's a documentary about him. People don't understand him. He was a very interesting cat. When he started his show, it was really intellectual and brilliant. And he quickly realized this is not going to survive. I need to do what's going to keep me on the air. And then it became Jerry Springer. I think I saw that. That's a new documentary, right? Or somewhat. I just heard about it. I heard a podcast about it. And then I heard about the documentary.

7:39I mean, he's someone I followed for a while because I find him so fascinating. I mean, anyone who pays for a hooker with a check at that, you know, something's very wrong, but very funny. So yeah, he's just a really interesting cat. I mean, he was.

7:51Brett Stapper:Was Steve his bodyguard? I don't know why that stands out in my head. Wasn't there like a big guy named Steve who would come running in and like break fights up? I think it was something like that. When the show got to that point, I had stopped watching it. I mean, once it turned into just a melee of crazy town, that wasn't interesting to me. But in the early days with the software company, when I was doing tech support and helping with development, I just stayed home every day watching TV, waiting for the phone to ring. And that was a show that I watched till it went off the rails. On the topic of shows, let's talk about another show you were part of.

8:19Brett Stapper:So I've been watching Shark Tank for a very long time in my life. I know you were on Shark Tank. I remember that episode, which was very cool to see. What's it like as you're walking down that hallway? Well, I loved it. one of my other lifetimes, I was a professional stand-up comic. And so, you know, high pressure situations, I really like walking into them because one of the superpowers you get from doing stand-up comedy for, I did it for a little over a decade, is you just don't worry about what's going to be thrown at you because you'll figure it out. But my wife is a slower walker and I'm kind of like dragging her with me.

8:49So what they did right before we walked down the hallway is they did a thing called jitters where they said just, you know, in a separate room actually, where it looked like the hallway was right behind the door, but it wasn't, it was a mock hallway. And they just said, you know, just especially because I was there with my wife, just have a conversation about, you know, what's going on. And we had been in business for about two and a half years at that point. And it was the first moment I took a breath and realized what we had done in just two and a half years. And I just started crying. I mean, it was really overwhelmed.

9:17I was so happy to be doing with her what we had done together. And I could hear the producers like, this is gold. They didn't use it. So I just really love that. and even being in the tank. The first thing I figured out very quickly is don't tell jokes, don't try to be funny. Because what people don't know is they're not paying a lot of attention to you. They're making a lot of notes. There's never like all this attention on you. And if you do something funny and they're not paying attention, it's easy for them to edit it to, you know, you do a funny joke and then cut to them going, what? And the bigger mistake people make is those people don't know who you are, but you have a false sense of familiarity with them from having watched them.

9:52So don't act like they're your friends because then you'll say something stupid, either about your business or about them. Never call Mark Cuban cubes, but people do that all the time. Don't, you know, these are potential investors. You want to be personable. But the whole thing was, I mean, I had a blast. My favorite moment, I'll tell you, is that when Kevin made an offer to us, it was such a non-starter, we forgot that it happened. And when Robert reminded us, my wife says to him, and we have a debate about whether she actually said the last part, what I'm going to recount. I remember it, she doesn't.

10:22She says, so are you bringing anything to this offer other than money? And he says, well, I'm a smart businessman and I got a good Rolodex. And I remember her saying, so nothing. Which is really true and brilliant. And I love that. So.

10:37Brett Stapper:Did you watch the episode last week by chance of Shark Tank? You know, we were in season four and somewhere around season five, there's a private Facebook group for people who've been on the show. Yeah. And someone said, who still watches the show? Nobody. Nobody. When you see how the sausage is made, it's not fun watching sausage be made. Yeah. So no, what was on last week? That was Mark Cuban's final episode. It was like, I'm watching it. Like I'm like getting teary eyed watching it. I'm like, I've been watching it on TV now for like 12 years. Mr. Wonderful's crying. Like this guy's crying. Like it was like a happy moment, but it was like just, you know, it was the end of an era.

11:11Brett Stapper:It's kind of what it was. It really was because he was the only guy who had real money. Yeah. And he will admit that he did not make money investing in all these companies. and at the same time for the companies who were able to use the investments successfully, you know, thank you, Mark Cuban. We had a funny moment where they like to kind of go, gotcha, and at one point, I think Mark might've said, wait a minute, you're a husband and wife? Yeah, but you said she owns the company. What's up with that? I said, oh, I had a software company that was involved in a lawsuit. We wanted to make sure that they couldn't, you know, pierce the corporate veil and get to our assets.

11:41And he goes, what was the company? And I mentioned it, he goes, I think I used a software company. So I think I used to own that product. I said, yeah, you're in my database. and immediately he was like deflated. It's like, I don't really, you know, I don't care. I took your money before, no big deal.

11:55Brett Stapper:So how'd you go about building the brand then? So launched in what, 2009, that was two and a half years later, you're on Shark Tank. How are you building the brand in those early days? Well, the early days was really simple. I mean, frankly, the reason my wife didn't want me to do this is we had started a search engine marketing business. And I said to her, this will be a good case study. I think in three months, I can probably own all the keywords that I need, which was wrong by a long shot. It only took me six weeks. And so I was just making a lot of video content. And then there was maybe 25 different video sites.

12:24YouTube was not the most popular. So I was posting stuff just everywhere and interlinking things and just doing clever SEO stuff and just putting out a lot of content and basically getting in the way of conversations, finding out where people were talking about what we were doing, like ultra running and born to run and participating and adding value to the conversations and saying, by the way, you know, those waranches that the Terramaro running in, I made a similar version of that. You can buy a do-it-yourself kit and make your own for 20 bucks, 30 bucks. And I mean, very low key, but then I had built a decent website.

12:54I knew how to capture email addresses. I knew how to do email marketing. So it just kind of moved from there. And what really drove the business was not so much my marketing, but the experience that people were having, like not because of what we're making, but because by getting out of shoes to squeeze your toes, mess with your posture, don't let you feel, don't let you move, et cetera. And they would tell two friends and they'd tell two friends, you know, like we'd get an order from the runner in the family, the person who read Born to Run. And a week later, we'd see an order for five other people in the household and who aren't runners like, oh, I just love these little sandals.

13:25These are really fun. And then it was customers telling us, I love the sandals, but what am I going to do in the winter? What am I going to do with the office? What am I going to do if I want to go to the gym? What am I going to do if, and we just, the product line developed from customers telling us what they wanted next. And eventually us knowing how to fill holes that they didn't know to ask for. But all that was driven by an unbelievably lucky event among a million lucky events, including my wife eventually deciding to become my wife after spending four years avoiding me like I was shit on a stick.

13:52And to make a long story short, we met a guy who had 35 years in product development experience because while he was walking his dog, a friend of ours was walking his dog and the dogs knew each other. Guy started talking. This product developer has this phone to Moran to our friend. I looked at it. We got together. He said, I love what you're doing. How can I help? And I said, I don't know how you can help. You made five times more money last year than we made last year. He goes, yeah, but I just retired. I'm like, you're hired. So he not only was our product developer, but a great mentor to us.

14:21And had that not happened, you know, a lot of this would not have happened.

14:24Brett Stapper:How impactful was that book being released, Born to Run? I feel like it angelized the idea. Yeah. I used to tease Chris McDougal, the guy who wrote it, that he was my unofficial marketing department. So anytime there was a book signing somewhere, I would advertise around that. I did a campaign where I printed 50 ,000 bookmarks and I sent them out to customers and said, go into bookstores and put these in Born to Run. And eventually, actually, Chris had never promoted a product, never mentioned a brand, never talked about a shoe. For the last few years, we're basically the official footwear of Born to Run.

14:54And so it all kind of came around. But yes, that was a huge help for us. Again, a whole lot of things conspired to happen all around the same time. And that was one of them.

15:03Brett Stapper:I feel like that's the story for every successful company, right? There's a conspiracy of things that happen to come together at a good time. When people ask me how we got here, I said it's 90 % luck and the other 10 % is also luck. And then there's a separate 100 % runs in parallel. It's 90 % working your ass off and 10 % hopefully being smart enough to know how to put out the fires or find someone who knows how to put out the fire that started overnight, even though nothing changed since yesterday. But the luck factor is we were on the How I Built This podcast. And I said to Guy Raz, I love that the last question you ask is how much was luck effectored?