Kevin Plank: CEO of Under Armour

25:24How did you avoid the college rules restricting collegiate athletes from holding jobs? Yeah. Well, the rule, you know, prior to NIL was you were not allowed to have a job, but nobody said anything about starting a company. So, you know, between Maryland, between, you know, in the summers, I did that last year of bang and nails working construction, wearing Timberlands to work every day and, you know, sweating and hard and starting the morning at six or seven o 'clock. I learned there's a better way to do it. And working for somebody for, you know, know, a salary or paycheck was not something that inspired me.

26:05And I thought, you know, I'd rather do it myself. And as a walk-on, I didn't have a scholarship. I was lucky enough to earn one after my freshman year at Maryland, which was like one of the greatest days of my life. Was it? Yeah. What stands out to you from finding that out? Well, I mean, I was a walk-on. So I say my freshman year. So I had my first, my red shirt year. there was after my freshman year and I went down and had a couple big plays and I was like the special teams guy I was like I made it my thing and you know when you have specialists it was like you know come out and like I'm gonna run down and you know we had this thing called be the hammer not the nail it was a be the hammer not the nail award and so like my freshman year I got the hammer award like I don't know three four or five times or something so and it was basically you'd run down I was the wedgebuster guy so it was where you'd And again, in football, they tell you to keep your head up.

27:00They tell you, you know, lead with your shoulders, all those things. But I'm like, the heaviest thing on my body is my helmet. Like these guys are about 30 % more athletic than I am. So I'm going to use everything I have to throw into being able to break that wedge and get to the ball tackler. And, you know, and be on the team, be a part of that arena experience and, you know, tied in with your teammates and knowing that you're working for a goal that's bigger than any any one of us, which are like all these lessons of life, then of course I'd play at UA. What about that, as your thinking about it, kind of moves you?

27:34Team? There's a great line that Steve Mariucci has, the old great coach at Cal, the 49ers, et cetera. And he says his favorite part of football is the huddle. It's where you get all these different, you know, these people that come from different places, different backgrounds, different colors, different religions, different sizes. And in this one moment, everybody comes together, everybody gets quiet, and they yield to one person to say, what are we doing? And that comes from a higher power that's from a press box or from the sideline, and goes to the quarterback, and then one guy calls to play, and everybody says, you know what, we got it.

28:11They clap hands, they break the huddle and they go run a play. They get a chance to do it again. But at that moment, everybody's doing the exact same coordinated thing. And that's what makes, I don't know, I think it makes it, it's beautiful. When you have that, when the play works, you know, and what you, and then there's other times when you have to deal with things like the, you know, when people come back and they're like, no, no, I don't like that play. We should run a different one. Why aren't we doing this one? And that's like, you know what? We're all wearing the same jersey. and that's a very special thing is to have your jersey begin the game have the ability to compete and that's what we get the chance to do so do i have this correct you stole the cupid valentine idea from somebody else uh yeah good artists create the best artists steal um i was at at college park i'd realized that this bracelet thing my brother wasn't going to learn spanish anymore and so that I'd sold through the 2000 of bracelets and I was getting into t-shirts but this is one thing that in the calendar you know as a walk-on I was always trying to say like you know mom dad like I got it like I'll get my tuition I'll get my tuition and books now to be clear I don't think I told my parents about the scholarship till at least six months after I had it and so like tuition books like boy it's gonna be a hard year mom I hate doing it maybe next year I'll take the three grand.

29:33No, but I was my freshman year at Maryland. I'd gone to work for some guy and he said, hey, I've got this rose service. You know, can you help me deliver flowers? And I was like, sure. And the day that I went to go, I showed up at this guy's like, you know, how can I help? He's like, you know, meet me at my apartment at two o 'clock. You know, I'll give you flowers to deliver. And he bought flowers from a wholesaler. He pulled them together and I walk in this apartment and it was like, you know, one or two in the afternoon and there's like eight people running around. It's totally disorganized.

30:01This guy's assembling flowers in his room. And I'm like, he's like, I need you to deliver these flowers. He gave me like 12 orders. And it was like College Park, Bethesda. It was like 30 miles apart. It was a Friday afternoon. And I remember getting in the car, and I ended up delivering all the flowers. And the last one I delivered was like 10.30 at night because it was like this was the mission. So I did the mission for him. I got back and said, this is the worst organized thing I've ever seen. He's like, yeah, man, I'm graduating. So I was like, all right, we can do better than that. So the next year I'm like, this is a pretty good business because it comes right after or right in the middle of winter workouts starting just before spring ball.

30:39So there was like a break where February 14th hit in the calendar of a football calendar. So it worked perfect. And again, you can't have a job. They didn't say anything about starting a company. So I had some guy go out and draw me this Calvin and Hobbes cartoon of like Calvin beating Hobbes over the head with a, you know, doesn't like, why didn't you buy me roses for Valentine's Day? Stuck these flyers all over campus and called it Cupid's Valentine. Our kind buds smoke all the competition, which led to a bunch of knuckleheads calling like, do you really have kind buds? It was like, this is a serious business.

31:09We're selling flowers. $25 for a dozen flowers, my freshman year. And bought 1 ,200 flowers, put them in boxes, you know, sold through all 100 dozen flowers. You know, gross had a$5 delivery charge, gross three grand, cost me like 600 bucks. I'm like, this is great. Came back the next year and my girlfriend at the time, now my wife DJ, she was like critical in having the free labor to be the one who was taking taking phone orders at this time. Came back the next year, like we can do better than that. We did 250 dozen. My junior year we did 350 dozen. My senior year delivered 1186 dozen flowers in a single day.

31:51The only problem was the ambition was selling 1500 dozen flowers in a single day. But it was like three days staying up in a row. And I'll never forget, you know, taking phone calls like, like leading up into like some of the like important lessons learned from, you know, flower delivery was I also bartended on Wednesday nights, which I heard you were quite the bartender. Not bad. But that's where I learned a lot of great lessons behind a bar too, where you learn fast math, you learn how to deal with people, you learn or manage with, you know, the person who's like, you know, they're waving a$10 bill at you.

32:22And you know, trying to be a big shot or something else. I'm like, you know, let's be clear. I can be bought. It's just not $10 for this amount. So, you know, and I'll make her fall in love with you too if you, you know, let me help out to be a good bartender. In a weird way, do you think bartending actually was quite beneficial in teaching you sales skills? Incredibly important. Relationships, control. I'll never forget the first lesson that I learned. At a bar, the guy came in. He says, I'm going to teach you everything you need to know about being a bartender. I said, what's that? He says, it's this.

32:54So what's that? He says, one second. You know, it's like there's somebody who owns this bar, but like when you're behind the bar, like you're in charge. And now you're accountable for the bar. You're accountable for the environment, the vibe, the culture at the bar as well. You've got a bank. You're running a business. There's a lot of people having a lot of fun, but you've got a job to do. At the end of it, you've got to sit down. You've got to be clear of mind and thought and be able to count your bank, have everything reconcile, be able to give that back to the bank and do a good job. That was something I took a lot of pride in.

33:23Like your tips will be reflective of the job that you do as well too. And there's people that did it the wrong way, there's people that did it the right way, but I took a lot of pride in being really great and having people want to come see you and come spend time with you and helping the bar, promoting it and all those kinds of things. It was like, it was critical lessons. But when I could go on a Wednesday for a gig that started at 9 o 'clock and close at 1230, count my bank by 1 o 'clock, back home by 1.30, you know, 2 o 'clock in the morning, have two or 300 bucks in my pocket, like, all week.

33:53It was like, all right, it kept it moving, it kept it going, so nobody ever knew about that bartending gig either on Wednesday nights at Nantucket Landing or Parker's. What do you remember from visiting New York's garment district before you graduated? It was an awesome place, you know, 1996. It's fascinating to think about. 1980, I think it was like 95 % of the apparel worn in the United States was manufactured in the United States. By 1996, the time that I started Under Armour, it was 50 % of apparel used in the U.S. was produced in the U.S. Let me correct my math on these two. Five years later, it was down to less than 10%.

34:35Today, it's less than 1 % at best. And this isn't some ambition of how do we get the manufacturing district back or manufacturing back to the U.S. Because I spent the first five or six years of starting Under Armour on a soapbox, you know, being proud of the fact that we made our products, you know, from Baltimore to Bel Air, Ohio, to Afrata, Pennsylvania, to Allentown, Pennsylvania. And I didn't know anything about manufacturing when I'd started UA. But I'd heard about this place called the Garment District in New York City. So I got in my 1991 Ford Explorer, drove up to 34th and 7th Avenue, parked my car, and started walking around and just trying to find, I've got this synthetic material.

35:16Like, is there more stuff like this? Because I bought this first sample, ripping the content label out of my compression shorts that I wore at Maryland. I took them to a local fabric store called Minnesota Fabrics or something in Beltsville, Maryland, just next to College Park. Found this material that fit the idea I had. Made my first seven prototypes. Tried them out on my teammates. And realized this is something better than a short-sleeved cotton t-shirt in the summer and a long-sleeved cotton t-shirt in the winter that doesn't get wet and soaked. And nobody ever thought about apparel. Apparel had never been part of a consideration for.

35:46This is something that athletes would want that's a better solution. So walking into the garment district, it was like, you know, 100 fabric shops. And I remember I'm like, wow, there's so much more I can see. It was finding a manufacturer who was down on 10th Avenue that I'd read up, picked up a copy of WWD Women's Wear Daily, looked in the back, found a contract manufacturer, and like, I need to make my first run of shirts here. because I'd gone to a local tailor in Maryland, had the first seven or eight to sort of proof of concept. Now I was going to go to scale and build 500 shirts. Found a manufacturer in the old NBC building, the National Biscuit Company.

36:29These guys walked into this shop that was interesting, interesting at best, the guys that I found. But they brought them fabric, gave it to these guys. supposed to take two weeks to make my shirts. It took like, you know, two months to get it, you know, back from them. And again, the answer was always like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We shipped them on Tuesday. We shipped them on Tuesday. Can you give me a tracking number? Yeah, I'm going to have to find that for you and get back to you. Oh, they haven't gotten here. Oh, they must be out. Let me check on them again. Anyway, I had my first run of product in New York City, where I took those first 500 shirts and between my high school team, St.

37:08John's, There was 11 guys signed Division I scholarships for my high school team. Four of them made it to the NFL. Two of them won Super Bowls. The 13-plus guys at Fork Union, plus the friends of friends. One of my founding partners, Ryan Wood at Under Armour. Colorado to Fork Union Military Academy. Went to Youngstown State. Won the 1AA National Championship his freshman year with head coach Jim Trestle. Lost in the championship game their sophomore year. Transfers to Arizona State. gets in a rooms with Jake Plummer. And so it was like this network of people that I had. His high school best friend was a guy named Tony Buscelli, the first number one draft pick for the Jacksonville Jaguars.

37:51So like that was basically the genesis of Under Armour was it wasn't like a clear product idea. I was coming out of school or coming through school and I'm like, I know 50, 60 guys that are playing in the NFL. It wasn't like I have this great idea, what do I do? It started with the idea, which is always the line that I give to young people, to kids. You know, tell me something smart. Like, what can I do to be a great entrepreneur? And my easiest advice is always just like, utilize your network. What does that mean? The person on the left or right of you, they may look like they're just the kid that eats nuts all the class or picks their nose or something else, but they may be the next Fortune 500 CEO.

38:29They may be the next, like keep those relationships fresh. And that's where my relationships were with these group of individuals who had made it to the highest level of the sport that I aspired to be a part of. And realized really early on that I wasn't going to play in the NFL. And it wasn't like a lack of ambition, like, by golly, I'm going to do it. But, like, I knew sport was going to be a part of my life. And recognizing that, you know, these 60 athletes were the best use was not me calling them and saying, hey, can I borrow$300 from you? Congratulations, you made it to the NFL. It was, hey, I went to New York.

39:02I made these shirts. I got about 500 of them. And I put about 60 care packages together to everybody I ever played with, every friend of friends. So Jake Plummer, Tony Buscelli, you know, got them, you know, hey, Ryan, can you send this to these guys? And Ryan went on to be drafted by the Dallas Cowboys, played with them as well. So like - Not an insignificant expense either. No, no, no, no. And sort of an awesome opportunity because as I put, you know, the first$16 ,000 of seed money that I had into like making this first run of 500 shirts, getting these packages put together and getting the brand out there.

39:40because what I realized is, number one, I had a network. But number two, that network had a lifespan on it. And the average career in the NFL is three years and three games. The pension kicks in at three years and four games is how it works in the league. And so I realized these guys are famous, but they're going to be famous for the next couple of years. So what can I do without leveraging them, without taking things from them? But how could I be accretive to their process and give them a piece of performance? So I put together packages of three T-shirts. I sent them to everybody I knew. I asked guys, like, can you also give me the names?

40:15They'd be like, who is your equipment manager when you were at Florida State? Who is your equipment manager at Miami? Who is your equipment manager at USC? One of these guys, these equipment managers, the guys that are actually in charge of the budgets, I put packages of three, three T-shirts together for everybody that I knew and just said, hey, this is Plank. There's this company I'm working for. Because if I said it was me, they'd be like, oh, you know, what is this thing? Is this real or not? So I was always kind of used like this mystical, you know, there's some bigger force, you know. Explain why you had two business cards.

40:45One business card said Kevin Plank President. Another business card said Kevin Plank Sales Manager. And so to any customer, I'd always give them the Kevin Plank Sales Manager business card. The reason for that is because when they'd hit you and say, you know, we're going to need a better number. How do we negotiate this? I'm like, geez, I'd love to give you a bigger number. But the old lady back in D.C. would never go for it. So I'm sorry. My number is firm. And then you needed the president card because when I talked to our suppliers or fabric mills or manufacturers They need to know that the buck stopped someplace and that like they're gonna get paid And I was the one that was gonna do it for him So from ham shake again look him in the eye Kevin Plankley.

41:19Yeah, you'll get your money You upgraded the 91 Ford Explorer to a 94 Ford Bronco at some point We also similarly got a ton of use. Yeah, yeah 53 ,000 miles those first two years because at 23 starting my company, 22, 23, I wasn't old enough to rent a car. So I'd fly to Atlanta and I tried doing this, excuse me, can you help me? This is life before Uber. And so I tried working it out with Hertz. I tried working it out with budget, rent a car, and nobody would cut me a break from the 25 years old is when the insurance kicks in, so you're not allowed to rent a car. So I realized I'm just gonna have to drive everywhere if I'd go to you know UVA Virginia Virginia Tech You know down to South Carolina stopped through Marshall like just map these routes off How am I gonna go visit, you know 10 15 20 schools in a trip and try to make you know one team in the morning one team in the afternoon?

42:18But I realized like when I I sent out those packages for for my friends. I was like do me a favor I sent you three t-shirts. Try this product. Wear it under your pads. And if you like it, please give one to each guy in the locker next to you. And if they like it and you want more, tell your equipment manager and have them call me. And that was like one of the biggest unlocks when I got started. A, it was a network I have of guys that would get me in the door to validate the product. But then it was sort of figuring out, so how does this work? When you look at a... And 96 was very different than sort of the way that deals are structured today, which are very formal.

42:52It's very much it's one mono brand. Like this is this is our outfitter, our supplier. You know, when I played, it was like Nike shoes, champion jerseys. You know, things were still sort of coming together. And I'll never forget when the equipment manager, I went to our equipment manager at Maryland, Ron Ohringer. And I just said, hey, Ron, if I wanted to sell this product, like how does it work? And he goes, well, you talk to me. I said, what does that mean? Not the president, not the athletic director, not the head coach, not the offensive coordinator. he's like that's me that's the equipment manager and by that he's like I'm in charge of a budget of you know a million dollars million and a half dollars to build uniforms and bring them in I'm like really like you guys do do the laundry every day it's like oh no this is now and now it's a full-blown administrative job and back then it was a little more of like get them dry but the pitch that we had for the equipment managers was a this is much better product for your athletes this works it's great but the other thing that worked and made Under Armour relevant as to how it grew so quickly was the fact that by wearing, putting synthetic in the washing machine, these guys basically had to stay there until all the laundry was done every night.

43:54And so we could get them out of there basically an hour earlier because Under Armour would dry in the dryer like this versus, you know, sitting around waiting for soaking wet cotton t-shirts to dry. Did you kind of think you were done when you checked your bank account and there was only$1 ,500 left? Yeah, it was more like negative$1 ,500, but - I mean, did you kind of deep down think that was probably it? Well, that was a longer story. So I'd had about$2 ,000 in the bank that day. And I'm giving you, you're getting a lot of like the grit stuff or the, I don't know, sort of the edgy stuff. There's like a much softer, like the lessons learned from getting kicked out of high school, like those definitely trailed on.

44:33But this is life before private equity, angel investing, like just didn't really exist in 96. The Small Business Administration played a critical role in helping finance the company. And so I'm grateful to the federal government for their help with doing that. Lots of credit cards? Yeah, about five different credit cards, totaling about$40 ,000. So my initial$16 ,000 in seed money to$40 ,000 in credit cards to friends and family. And at one point, I'm selling a point in the company for$1 ,000. And it was like, I had one guy, there was a friend of mine, I was like, I need$10 ,000. And they're like, do I want to invest in you or not?

45:11And they're like, hemming and hawing about it. Like, you know what, I'm going to make the investment. I'll give you the 10 grand. Great. I'm going to need the money now. I mean, I mean, I mean, I need that now. He said, OK, I'll I'll I'll fill out a check then right now. I'm like, I mean, I need you, like, come with me to the bank. We're going to like deposit it right now. Have you signed the check over if that's OK? Like, it needs to be cleared by two o 'clock. So it was one of those. And they turned me down. But there was one time where I turned and I. Too bad for that person. It's OK. It's OK.

45:41There's like a hundred people that now are like, oh, I was going to invest in your company. Now I'm like, I don't remember you. But that's a privilege. That's an honor. And that's what a great testament to all the people that have worked so hard to build UA up. But there was one time that I went to the bank and I'm like, you know, I used to sit every night with a big blue checkbook on my lap. And I'd call the bank, see what the balance, how many checks would clear. This is before digital banking. You basically would write a check. you'd send it to somebody they didn't have to deposit it how long it took for the float from one bank to another bank he had like four or five days of float that you could play with so i was constantly in this i think i'm going to get this other check it'll come in on thursday i'll get this other check to come in on friday um and one day i was like i'm just short and i need to make you know my payroll which was only myself ryan wood um and kip falks uh my original partners uh within under armor and it was like thursday it was like thursday afternoon i'm like we're short.

46:39We need like$2 ,500. So I took out the last$2 ,000 in the bank, got my car, drove to Atlantic City. And like knowing that I needed to make, I needed to double that. I basically needed to make, I needed to come home with$4 ,500. Got like$4 ,000 and then proceeded to lose it all. And to like know what broke feels like. So this must have been a year into the company around in 1997. I'd come home from in that drive, like, drove to Atlantic City, had the presence of mind to fill my car with gasoline before I walked into the casino. Walked in, lost all the money that I had. In driving back, I mean, I was broke, like broke like there was no money.

47:20I was now short of probably about$4 ,000 short of all those checks that had come through. I had no money in my car. and this is back when we used to have change. Like there was no quarters left and I'd gone through the dimes too. And like the nickels, like anything silver was going to get a look from me. But I couldn't even pay the toll at the Delaware Memorial Bridge coming home. And what happens when you can't pay the toll at a toll house, they stop the line of traffic, the person comes out, they write down your license number, they write down your license plate. It's incredibly embarrassing, like one of the lowest points.

47:54And driving back, I know where to go. and so I went to my mother's house. I'm like, I need dinner. And to do this was like demonstrating the love of my mother. She's a terrible cook, wonderful woman, awful cook. So the only thing that I'm going there for dinner was not a good sign. So I show up and she's like, how's everything going? What's going on with the company? I'll never forget. Anything positive you say to somebody, they're going to tell what one or two people. Anything negative you say, they're going to tell 12 to 15 people. So I was always really tight with that list. And so even my mom, I didn't want to talk to my brothers and I didn't want to hear like how's everything going and I'm like it's going great just signed you know three more schools you know we just you know Georgia Tech's on board we've got this one on board and I'll never forget it was a day where I actually I haven't wept much a lot in my life but I certainly wept on that day sitting in my car going you blew it you blew it you blew it you chose the wrong thing what's that place like when you're in that mindset like of I I blew it it's a terrible place.

48:54It's doubt. It's disbelief. It's, it's, God, it's vulnerability, which I'd say is a weakness, but today I know it's a strength. But like learning from that place, like I screwed up, I made the wrong decision. I was thinking about a couple of different things I could have done after school and I chose this one and it hasn't worked out. And so now I'm broke. What am I going to do? Go back to Prudential or or taking that Prudential life check? $40 ,000 job offer from Prudential. So I ended up going to, at the time I kept the P.O. box because I was in a residential neighborhood. I couldn't register the business at Grandma's basement.

49:31I couldn't have the phone lines coming. I had to be careful how I answered the phone. So I went to the P.O. box that was in Kensington near my mother's house, and I was like, I'll just go check the mail. And I walk in there, I open the P.O. box, and there's a check for$7 ,800 from Georgia Tech. And I'm like, what was I talking about? Back in business. let's go get this thing. And I promise it was the last time that I ever doubted like, did I make the right choice? From that day forward, I was like, you know, take the ball and we're going to run as hard as we can and go build an incredible company.

49:58You mentioned your mom's cooking. And how about the Fruit Loops and lasagna you lived on with Sal and Debbie? That was an awful experience. The guy who really taught me manufacturing, because I'd gone from, I was in DC at the time. I found a manufacturer up here in Baltimore. We had another friend who was starting a business named Dan Prunzik, a great player at Maryland. And he had a friend named Kurt Angle. And Kurt was a big wrestler of WWE fame, but he was a great Olympic wrestler before that. He was going to build this thing called the Angle. And he said, hey, how did you make your product?

50:32How's it work? I said, go to the Chamber of Commerce, find a group of manufacturers. He ends up pointing me to this place called Triple A in the USA, which is in Bel Air, Ohio, which sits right on the Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania border. And Dan called me. And he said, hey, I'm here. I'm trying to get the anglet, which is what we were trying to do. I'm trying to get the anglet built. And this guy, Sal, here, I told him about your business. And he told me to call you. He wants to talk to you. So I pick up the phone. And this guy, Sal, he's like, Kevin, this is Sal. I'm from the Bronx. The kind of guy I started every sentence with, I've been doing this 35 years.

51:06You don't know, kid. Every sentence would start that way. And he's like, where are you making your stuff? And at the time, my manufacturer in Baltimore was giving me the runaround. and I couldn't really get them to order. And they're like, they had an order for me. And I'm like, where's my stuff? He's like, we got a bigger order from Reebok. We're not making for you anymore. Loaded up the back of my Ford Explorer. It was in DC. It was like 945 in the morning. Drove to Baltimore, picked up everything I had, loaded in the back of that car, drove to Ohio that afternoon. Didn't have any place to stay.

51:37Sat there working out patterns with Sal, the line supervisor, this woman named Ella May Holmes, who actually still works at UA today. and we sat there working on patterns till about seven eight o 'clock at night and at the time it was like where are you going I was like I'd have to drive home to you know get a room I'll be back tomorrow morning four hours is the the drive time and he said why don't you come stay at the house it's a great and I go to this house and Sal it was like this little house in Bel Air Ohio it had these like paper-thin walls and Sal was like a performer or something but it was a very it was there's a lonely night of sleeping on some couch like this listening to sal and debbie um i guess make relations or something but it was like it was kind of holding my phone because you're going this is a very awkward experience and so but love was in the air and under armor was bound to get built from something as as aspirational as that so no baby that night but certainly a brand was or born it seems like there's a kind of confluence of events in 1999 i mean because one you have any given Sunday where not only do you convince the Oliver Stone film to use your product, but they pay the 40 grand or whatever it is to your 14 person company.

52:49Yeah, you've done your research. At the time. And then two, you convince your employees to go without pay for a few weeks to take out the ad in ESPN, the magazine. One moment more consequential than the other for you? I mean, the end of a given Sunday was a big deal. It was heading into Y2K. You know, at the time we were, so our first year we did 17 ,000 in revenues, 110 ,000, 400 ,000, a million three. So 90, so what was that? 99, you were, you know, million dollar company. And we'd, we'd, we'd, I needed money. You know, I was working with the mills, but the orders were picking up. The hardest thing about any new business, and people ask what's the most difficult thing, it's cash.

53:37You know, cash is king, cash is queen, you know, to make sure that you just have enough of it. Getting in front of the supply chain, because I'd have to place an order of raw materials, it was 60 to 90 days to have that from order to being built. You needed credit for that to happen. I didn't have credit. I was able to get about an$80 ,000 or$90 ,000 credit line from one of our important partner mills. And I found out that I could get people to make the same things at other mills, which would allow me to go from$80 ,000 credit here to an$80 ,000 credit here,$80 ,000 credit there. Built that first, went out and had that first run of shirts that were built from these manufacturers.

54:17These guys really, from what I learned from the manufacturers, how do you piece together the pain of cash or getting in front of it? 90 days to order the fabric. My credit had to be good. But my credit was basically maxed the entire time from 97, you know, at 80 grand. So I'd have to send them checks to basically pay down to get them to place new orders. That's why getting other manufacturers helped. Then you'd have to ship the goods. Then you had like the Georgia Techs, the check that I'd forgotten about from Georgia Tech that, you know, an order that I'd given for them six months before going through a government bureaucracy.

54:52It took that long to be able to, you know, get paid to me. And so trying to increase that cash on cash cycle was like one of the most difficult things that I've ever had to bear with. And then the sales come in from both the movie and the magazine ad and you're off kind of. But it was a bet with the movie. I mean, that year in 99, everybody was worried about Y2K. Like what's happening with, you know, is the world going to end when the zeros turn over on the computers? And there was this movie coming out. And I had a friend of mine who was an extra, you know, on the movie. And I said, what are you doing after school?

55:29Did you make it in the NFL? No, I didn't. But I'm doing this Oliver Stone movie down in Miami. What's that? Can you tell me a little more about it? Found out who it was, found out where the production office was, put a package together, wrote a letter and just sent to the head costume designer, this woman Mary Zofris, and just said, you know, dear Mary, my name is Kevin Plank. We have the latest new company, which is now outfitting the state of Miami alone, Florida State, University of Florida, University of Miami, Jacksonville and the Miami Dolphins, you know, all where they're, you know, all where our, our brand.

56:00And I sent the product package on a Monday, got there on a Tuesday. I got a phone call by, um, Wednesday afternoon. And it was like, Hey, Oliver's now seeing this. He was looking for something interesting in the product space. That would be like a character in the movie. Um, we like your brand a lot. I'm like, well, that's great. He's like, why don't you go ahead and send us, you know, can you send more samples out there? Sure. And then just send us another hundred. I'm like, ah, we're gonna need to charge you for the other hundred. And they're like, what? Like, do you understand the exposure we have?

56:27I'm like, I get it, but we, you know, we're going to need to charge you for that. So throughout the course of the filming of the movie, Any Given Sunday, which was like this, nobody knew how big it was going to be, but it was going to be an Oliver Stone, you know, biopic, you know, massive deal. And so they ended up paying for it. They spent about 40 grand with us, and Unnarumma certainly became a key character in that movie, like showing up on Jamie Foxx and showing up on, you know, LL Cool J and showing up just like on, You know Al Pacino, you know Cameron Diaz like all these great, you know, Hollywood stars that were there But in order to celebrate it I was like this movie's gonna come out and we don't we've never done an ad before we haven't been in in marketing we've just been sending our brochures around that we had and Wouldn't it be great?

57:11If we could market this and so I called ESPN the magazine, which is this was the preferred medium at the time and it was 25 grand for a half page ad. So I remember calling a company meeting, there were like 17 of us at the time, and just say, listen, you know, we got a little bit of money right now, but I want to spend it, you know, I want to run this ad on ESPN, the magazine. And we sort of like would let everybody like give their input and like, I think we should buy, we need more material, we need more machinery, we need to hire more people. It's like, I think we should run the ad. And so that's where I'm like, and we may need some money.

57:45So anybody that doesn't need their paycheck, Like if you want to skip a week, it'd be really helpful. We'll appreciate it with equity. And a bunch of people participated and some people were like, hey, I can't. And I'm like, that was okay. But we ended up, we had a prepaid, this$25 ,000 ad. So for a, you know, one point whatever million dollar company, we ended up doing, from that one ad in ESPN, the magazine, we ended up doing like$850 ,000 like the next week. So it was like this amount of flow. Because I had inventory. It was just like, well, how are you going to sell this? It's the end of the season.

58:18Teams were all done. So it was December. It was just like basically clearing out our inventory. So it took me another month to fill all the orders, you know, just to get the fabric in and get things going. But like some of my best advice to new entrepreneurs as well is always, you know, before you worry about private equity or anything else, do you have inventory? I've got inventory. Why don't you go sell your inventory? Because it doesn't come with a vote or an opinion. You can actually finish the vision that you have for that brand. Not to say there's great private equity investors. I had many of them, too, that helped.

58:47But, you know, early on, it's important to be able to just get that sort of operation bootstrap. Pull yourself up. The 2005 IPO, what was the cash offer you got the day before that would have been take home, you personally? Yeah. And why did you decide against it? It was more like a few months before then. But it was for like$850 million. dollars and my banker sent it over. It was an offer from another, another major company. Which company? It was VF Corp. And I'll never forget. I was thinking like, do I say that or not? But yeah, it was VF Corp. And my banker called me. He goes, I got an offer here.

59:28It's 850. He goes, but you know, if you want it, he goes, I'll get you a billion dollars easy. Like, let me, let me go, let me get, let me add them. And so it was basically a billion bucks on the table. And I thought about it and I talked to probably 25 or 30 different people. At the time I was 31, 32 years old. You know, I still own 50 some percent of the company. and I remember I talked to everybody and it's like I remember calling my lead director this guy Buzzy Krongaard real funny he ran Alex Brown he's the CIA the really cool man and in everybody was like oh yeah my god you got this like what do I do and it was like what do you do you crazy I remember calling Buzzy I said you know Buzzy we got this offer you're the lead director you know something really got to think about he just goes so when do we close I'm not I'm not really there.

1:00:17But I talked to three people, our CFO at the time, this guy Wayne Marino, really conservative guy. And he's like, I don't know. I think there might be something special here. There was Ed Stack at Dick's Sporting Goods. And his opinion was, look, I'm partial. I'd like a competitor to Nike. I think you guys have a chance. You could do it. And he said, for me, Kevin, it was never just about the money. And that really stuck with me. And the third was my wife. And I just said, what do you think? And she just goes, but you love Under Armour. So I was like, yeah, we turned it down. And then, which was incredibly risky because a lot of people had invested some of those$1 ,000 inputs and things.

1:01:02And if the stock never got above the billion dollars, you're vulnerable to lawsuits and all these other bad things that could happen. So it was definitely a bit of a risk. Had you taken that, you'd just invest that in index funds, you'd still be a billionaire 20 years later and not have, you know, put in the couple decades of work since then. You're doing the math for me. Yes. I got it, too. I have to imagine that you've thought about that. No. I mean, the beautiful thing about, I think, the entrepreneur mindset is I do a pretty good job of knowing where we are. And, like, it hasn't been a bad ride.

1:01:37It's been an awesome ride. Yeah. The experience, the athletes, the interaction. More importantly, I don't know, would Under Armour exist today or it would be some portfolio brand of another company that was here today and was relying on the product manager that was responsible for running it? But we've been able to build Under Armour as something special. You're sitting here in our hometown today. You get a chance to see the Under Armour Sports House, which is as unique and extraordinary as it gets. It's meant to be the living physical manifestation of walking into an athletic brand. Little girls and little boys that now get to try on and have that Under Armour.

1:02:09You know, and I don't know, maybe I can, maybe I can't. Well, and at some point it's just money. Like it. Yeah, I never want to be as. Now I have shareholder money. So it's but it's it's it's it's a thing that you want to make sure that you're respectful about, that you understand that process. But, you know, this is when we're we're we're we're at the big boy and girl room, you know, so we got to make we got to make the right decisions. But it it was. But without it, you know, fulfilling the vision of many of the things which Under Armour stands for today, because I do believe that the greatest chapters of this company are in front of us.

1:02:42And, you know, it's fun telling some of these old stories and, you know, kicking back and getting into it. But like the energy and excitement of what we have coming for us, like I'm proud of our story and our past. I really am. But the best part of it all is the simplicity of, you know, that little girl or that little boy, when they take an Under Armour shirt and believing that the world doesn't need another capable apparel and footwear manufacturer. The world needs a hope and a dream. They need something to aspire to. When you know that you can have something as physical as like a shirt, that when I put this shirt on, like I believe in my head that there's fundamental magic powers that exist in this shirt that are giving me some superpower to do something extraordinary that I could never do on my own.

1:03:24Like that little bit of a lift is what our brand is meant to be for, and whether it's somebody trying to, to make varsity, make the starting roster, maybe just that little girl, little boy, on their first day of school with a lunch tray and going, where am I supposed to sit? I'm scared. But this morning I put my head through and my arms through this shirt and I felt that squeeze on my body or I pulled this shoe on my foot and I'm wearing Under Armour and that's like, they make magic and they're giving me this superpower. That gift, that inspiration, that what if Apple or Tesla made shirts and shoes?

1:03:59Like, I don't think our industry is sometimes, you know, look, it's style, it's cool, it's all those things. But it is innovation. It is giving people like, you know, I don't know, is their shirt better than our shirt? Like, my shirt wears a pound and a half less than their shirt. You know, we're building something which everything we make should have that component of special that goes into it. And I understand from talking to those close to you, innovation and product is just kind of running through your mind constantly. and the rest of the day is going to be primarily forward-looking in the future.

1:04:31But I have one more question because you mentioned VF Corp. There were rumors, gosh, a decade-plus ago that Nike was going to make a run at acquiring Under Armour. Did they ever reach out? No. No. They just, they like killing people sometimes. By the way, you have said before they don't play fair. Why not? Because they're a big company. Everybody has tools. Everybody has resources. And, you know, there's a lot of strengths to being a big company, and there's a lot of strengths to being a small company. You know, we're sort of in this tween stage where I feel that we're more agile than the bigs, and we've got more resources than the smalls in our industry today where people are coming from.

1:05:13And what's your line? We're big enough to do anything but not big enough to do everything. Yeah, and that's it. Like, if we want to go sign an athlete, an asset, a league, you know, We're a$5 billion-ish company with a half a billion dollar marketing budget. That's a big enough budget to do anything. And what I hear from people more often, which stepping back into the CEO chair has been more about, is, boy, it doesn't feel like you guys are spending a half a billion dollars on marketing. And so that's one of the big initiatives that I have this time around, is making sure that it really gets through, that we're not just showing up in sort of non-active aspects of the world.

1:05:48There's a passive Under Armour logo on a wall. If a bank could do the deal, we shouldn't do it, like a naming rights deal or things like that. We should be proactive. We should be living and breathing with our athletes on body, working with cool and influence. And it's different today that the world works. It's not just about signing a team or signing an athlete, because Steph Curry winning another NBA championship doesn't mean that sales will skyrocket the next day. It all has to be part of a much bigger plan and a much bigger process, which is a long working process. Speaking of marketing and Steph Curry, explain how Ken Bazemore helped you.

1:06:24Yeah, he's instrumental. Well, if you want something, you don't always just have to go right at it. That's learning from maybe being a little more like a blunt hammer of learning how to have some tact. And so Steph Curry was this amazing number seven draft pick. And he was on to his, what, second or third year of his contract. and he was coming available with Golden State Warriors. We had a guy who had a relationship that knew Steph but knew Ken. Ken was like a journeyman in the NBA but ended up playing, I don't know, 15, 16 years, made a ton of money. Ken happened to be Steph Curry's locker mate for the Warriors.

1:07:03And so in seducing Stephan, it wasn't just to send you a bunch of stuff you know us. It was like, well, how do we have our first handshake? So the first handshake was let's sign the guy in the locker next to Stephan and then we're going to overwhelm him with product. And Ken was like, you know, a number 10, number 11 player and Steph was starting for the Warriors. And he was already annoyed by Nike's pitch. Yeah, yeah. But so we just thought, well, we're going to go ahead and we're going to overwhelm Ken with service, with attention, with product. We'd send him a package like every day. He'd just get something else.

1:07:37And then Steph's like, man, those guys, they take care of you, huh? Yeah, yeah, they take care of me. Why, they really take care of you? And Ken, you don't play that much either. Like, well, I wonder what it'd be like if I talked to them. And so it sort of like began the relationship, and there was a good relationship in place. But that got us in the door and got us our pitch and our first shot at Stefan. And then who put it over the edge was his daughter Riley, actually. What did he say about that? Well, when he was coming down, we got into the conversations. Nike and Adidas were the two that he was contemplating.

1:08:09Ken helped us get Under Armour into the conversation. with Stefan. And so when he was trying to make the call, I was like, all right, we've got to pick a shoe brand. You know, what do you want to do, Stefan? He's home with Aisha and his daughter Riley just at the time. And I think she was like two years old or so. And he's like sitting on the couch like this. And he had all three shoe boxes lined up on the coffee table. And he took a shoe out. And he had like a shoe sitting on each one of the three different shoe boxes. And, you know, one's orange, one's red, and ours is black. And he goes, which one do you think I should do?

1:08:40And so she turns around like a two-year-old and like, you know, wobbles over to the thing and she picks up the Nike shoe She looks at it turns it backwards throws it over her shoulder She goes over she picks up the Adidas shoe She looks at it turns over throws over shoulder and she picks it up and she turns around she goes here daddy this one and so Riley curry is the reason that Under Armour was able to sign with Stefan So okay tough point in the relationship 2018 I think you and your then president and COO travel west to convince Steph not to leave the brand. Take me into that meeting and what's discussed?

1:09:19Culture, love, relationship, personality. You know, the brand was getting punched from a couple different angles and Stephan was in, you know, he was a great partner. You know, we went in there and we broke bread and we had a conversation, said what we'd like to do, but that was the, that was a generation of Curry brand. And there's not an athlete in the world that doesn't say, or a phone call from an agent that I get, which are typically the eye rolls of, okay, get ready for it. I want you to sit down. But we want to do something innovative, whatever, whether it's a film project, whether it's an athlete, whether it's an asset.

1:09:55But we'd like to create something kind of like what Jordan brand is for Nike. Like, yeah, yeah. Everybody wants to build the next Jordan brand. It's very difficult to do, though. Our commitment to doing that with Stefan and has been an endeavor of love and learning and knowing just how much you just have to be resilient, of just staying and sticking with it just over and over and over again. And I was going to say, going into that meeting, I think you're annoyed that he's not wearing enough Under Armour product to games. He's annoyed that his shoes aren't selling as well as he'd like. As you're thinking about how you game plan that meeting, what's going through your head and then like how do you solve it when you're actually in that situation uh because you know this is just one example i'm sure these sorts of things come up all the time when you're yeah there's a human dynamic in everything a bathroom break at the appropriate time as well just like cool things down like make sure everybody can voice but and you're conscious of that yeah but this is like any any athlete relationship is always about people want to be heard.

1:11:03I'm not just some gimmick, some slogan, but I'm a person. So like my culture, my brand, my personality have to be a part of that. So it's critical that we have that. We're in the dawn of the Lake Tahoe tournament where, you know, Stefan shows up every year and he's like best in class and has the dreams of, you know, playing on the, on the, at least the senior tour someday, I think is he is that good. But it was like Curry golf was a part of it. You You know, what we do with Curry Women's, what we do with Curry Kids, you know, how we make him the ambassador, you know, and having an interaction like that, like taking him to Asia last year.

1:11:38It was extraordinary. You know, we had a four city tour over six days that was planned. It turned into a three city tour because we showed up at one of the cities and they said, I'm sorry, but you can't come here, Mr. Curry. We said, well, why not? So because your hotel, the Ritz Carlton, there's 8000 people that are waiting for you to get there. Every room is rented. There's people just riding the elevators up and down. And like the phenomenon that he creates is something which is extraordinary. And so, you know, that's our obligation is to make sure that we can do a good job of harvesting that.

1:12:07Harvest that love that people have of something that's so pure, which is the stroke of Stephen Curry, which there's just nothing else like it. What lessons have you learned from kind of the uniqueness of that partnership? And how do you get it to where you'd like it to be long term? Yeah. Yeah. Any one of our relationships is something which is meant to be authentic, right? It has to be like felt. You know, we've been doing this a long time and we work in a competitive industry. There's a lot of brands that compete that try to make their version of what's the next great sports brand or I have the next great basketball shoe.

1:12:44And that's why, you know, having an ambassador like Steph and having a product team and the innovation team like what we have, Curry Flow is something we'll show you later today, but the stickiness of the innovation or technology that exists in that shoe, it's second to none. And it's part of what helps create the separation or the stopping power between Stefan and his opponents, which is something which is, you know, what our brand is meant to do, is help give you that little nub, that little edge that just allows you to be a little bit faster, a little bit stronger, and you fight a little bit longer.

1:13:11I want to talk to you about your personality. I was reading one of your friends that was quoted saying, I mean, they remember you being intimidating, having a fiery demeanor, competitive back to when you were in fifth grade. But how about the ways in which you think you're difficult? Certainly patience has been something. You know, I want to think about things like even having this conversation of like, so what is that energy in the room like? Like, how do you introduce it? Because I'm a lot. What does that mean to you? I've got a point of view. You know, I don't walk in a room and just say it's lovely to be here.

1:13:48I'm looking around and going, it's a really nice room. But, you know, they should have had a second shade on that blind, and it should be something that could be closed right now. You're thinking, like, here's the 5 or 10 things that are wrong with the 90 things that are great. It doesn't mean that you have to be mindful of that, that you can't become, you know, so analytical or make sure that it's not perceived as anything other than, I just want it to be the best, you know? And that's sort of that, you know, that aspiration that EUA has is that our job is to, you know, we say we haven't built our defining product as a brand.

1:14:20And it's looking and going like, well, what makes like... And that's your mantra. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's given information. I mean, our vision, our mission statement now is to provide you the performance solutions that you never knew you needed. And then once you tried them, you're wondering like, how did I ever live without this? You know, and it's like, oh my gosh, like what did the world do before, you know, stretch and microfiber and moisture management, like all these great things that now exist that we take for granted. But Under Armour created that. The term performance apparel was coined by our brand when I had to make a filing at the patent and trademark office, which was, you know, here's the name.

1:14:53It's called Under Armour. And they're like, great. My friend Pat Hurston, who was worked with the patent and trademark office and had a firm that did all of our licensing and awesome guy. But I was like, great. I'm going to file this trademark for you for the word. Talk to him yesterday. Yeah. Cool. Cool. Great guy. I said, I'm going to file this trademark for the word Under Armour. and he's like, great, you need to have a specific with a generic. I'm like, what does that mean? He's like, well, you can't just say, you know, Coca-Cola. It has to be Coca-Cola beverage or soda pop. You know, it's like everything.

1:15:28So it had to be Under Armour and it was like athletic apparel. It was like athletic apparel? Something didn't fit about that. And so like we're going to go with performance apparel. I was like, performance apparel? It sounds like a set of street tires. Like it didn't really register with people. But coining that phrase, Under Armour performance apparel, it really was much bigger than a t-shirt it's become an entire industry that's led to pants and shirts and jackets and just a mantra that why do we just allow non-performance from our apparel because we expect it in our footwear which is where our industry had been focused I think prior to Under Armour coming along which is why that was our ticket that got punched that allowed us to sort of get to the next level was that we basically said we're going to take the entire space of apparel and we're going to focus on making everything there actually do something to enhance the performance of an athlete.

1:16:15All right, wait, I want to get back to you, though, because I'm curious kind of your thoughts on your personality and kind of what makes you tick and all that. If somebody was evaluating you who knew you well and said, these are where I think there's most opportunity for improvement, what do you think they'd say? I can be relentless, you know, in getting on an idea if I believe it's the right idea. But I'm a big believer that the best idea wins. Like, this isn't how do we run around and push my idea. I mean, I've got two products I'm most excited about now, which is, you know, our Stealth Form Uncrushable hat, our new No Way backpack.

1:16:53And these are things that came through our, you know, our incredible team. Like, I don't, I want to make sure it's not, there's a difference between, like, you know, running your idea versus running, like, a great idea. What does Relentless look like for you? I'm not a big sleeper. I'm an average golfer at best, like a 13-ish, 14-ish, probably more on that side. But I'm a great guy to play golf with. I hit it hard. I play fast. I tell pretty good stories because I'm well-traveled. And I sort of, I get what's happening. But, you know, I like that aspect of relentless is meant to be a, it's what it takes for business.

1:17:37You know, the word relentless or the word resilience are probably maybe two of them. You know, we're celebrating our 20th year as a public company this November. We'll celebrate our 30th year in business in, you know, August of next year. You know, in order to have that kind of, you know, consistency, continuity, you know, that's something that needs to be shaped and harvested. And so what I'm trying to bring is having this sort of five-year break in the midst of my CEO tenure at Under Armour is to make sure that I was reflective enough. Because some of the people you talk to are maybe in month 14 of being back in the chair, 15 of being back in the chair, really having the opportunity to start expressing.

1:18:17So what are the things that you've learned? Because, look, relentless works. Relentless got under and rebuilt the first time. It got us to$5 billion. But understanding what that means and maybe being able to apply a little bit of wisdom. And just like pushing and going as hard as you can isn't always the right answer. But it's being able to develop a little bit of stroke. It's being able to not just be the one that's pushing and trying to make the sale, but maybe take the glasses, tip it to the edge of the nose a little bit, and just be like, let me be thoughtful and reflective on what we want to do.

1:18:48So I feel like adding that balance or that range to what my persona or my personality has been, it means relentless is probably still there. It means being a really good listener. It means having the ability to be a little more patient. I described our go-to-market calendar of 18 or 20 months, better said, as forever. It feels like forever from now, we're working on spring 27, fall 27 right now. And the thing of wanting to fix things when they're broken or they're not working as well or optimized where they can be, that's something for me that I'm proud of being able to bring that in this chapter, being a really good listener, You know, sitting down and making sure that people are actually heard because that input can come from anywhere.

1:19:38Now, it needs to be driven by someone with a point of view. But the inputs that go into that, they have to be fair because I don't own all the best ideas. And what I've learned this time around as well, there was certainly a lot of force of nature that went to the first chapter. And that wasn't just myself. That was my partner's Ryan. It was my partner, Kip. You know, the way that we approach it. You know, how long are we working today? I don't know, about 10 minutes longer than you. And so pulling one or two all-nighters in a week was not it, but that's what it takes to crack through in an industry that my first trade show was the super show in Atlanta with 13 ,000 exhibitors, every one of them trying to become the next Nike.

1:20:22And for some reason, we were able to break through. It's because it was personal. It did matter. It was the cash coming from my credit cards. It was our reputations on the line. And so I think that built into a bit of the DNA that's Under Armour. So I want those two things to reflect. I want my personality or my brand with all of my strengths and, frankly, being able to be aware of all those weaknesses and vulnerabilities and other things, as I said, of making those the strengths today. I think at one point in time, you went to an executive coach. What did that entail and what did it teach you?

1:20:59Oh, I have a coach today. Do you? Yeah. So like what is, in what ways does that help? It's phenomenal. I mean, the approach is not like, okay, here's what we're going to do with the tactics of business. It's beautiful. It focuses more on like, how do we create love? Like, what are you trying to do? You're trying to go in there and show everybody that you have the right answer? What do you want to inspire them to do something great? And so somebody's got to call the ball on like, you know, where we're going, how we're going to get there, the best tools to get there as well. those are the kind of things that you're leaning on your team that you're making sure that it's their voices that are coming through.

1:21:30It's a, you know, much more evolved, you know, better sense of understanding is that, look, myself, the brand, anybody is certainly a work in process, which I've been a part of that journey for a long time. And so I did get lucky. But I've, as Chi Chi Rodriguez used to say, the harder I work, the luckier that I would get. And so I still believe in that work ethic and that belief in doing it. But it's working a little smarter. I wouldn't manage hard work in terms of the number of hours as much as I would of the productivity and the output. And what does working smarter look like? Measured in three times and cutting once, you know, versus measuring twice.

1:22:12The Under Armour story is one where we were fortunate enough to enjoy this trajectory of growth where, you know, is the curve, the slope looks like this, you know, where we're consistently just, you know, growing at 20 % a quarter on a regular basis. The good news is that I have the blueprint of what built that, but now doing it through a lens, which is a way for us to, as I like to say, pour concrete this time and ensure that those lessons are sustainable. And that's why a lot of the additions we've made, especially our brand president who was hired just about a year ago. And Eric Littke, he had a mandate and he had a brand president.

1:22:49He's responsible for all of our brand and all of our product. A former Adidas guy. Yeah. And Eric had spent 26 years at Adidas. He was the first guy to hold that job in American, a non-German, to hold that job for Adidas when he was there. And he started in 13 and from Boost and NMD and Yeezy and all these great things that Eric did there, having him be able to come here and apply that lesson, it's like leaning on someone. But bringing Eric to run brand and product for Under Armour, the mandate was simple. It was, number one, we have a half a billion dollar marketing budget. Find us$100 million.

1:23:24Find us 20 % of that that we can use to be really agile with, to really go tell our story. Number two is write the strategic business plan. You've seen what it looks like at the bigs. You've studied it. You've been around it. This isn't work for an outside accounting firm. I believe that you can outsource your cost-cutting. I don't believe you can outsource your strategy. And so Eric has been pulling all these pieces together into one concise document that we have that now is explainable for everybody to understand. And number three was to help us build the operating model because it's the most complicated thing about running a global business.

1:23:56We've got more than 2 ,000 retail stores around the world, 16 ,000 people doing business in 156 countries. And every one of them right now is at that moment like, are they about to grow? Are we about to get there? So the way that you work with the global dynamics of product or marketing and the way that you pop into the regional approach between we have three regions with Asia Pacific, AMEA, and the Americas. And so each one of them has their own leaders. And so you're in a matrix environment. We're just, I think about when, you know, I do believe in micromanagement at certain levels. I think it's totally underestimated.

1:24:38So I was going to ask you about that. Without question. Yeah, explain your view on, because you struck me as somebody, or from what I've read, that, you know, you're willing to, I mean, micromanaging is something that. Yeah, I just, I want to get it right. I want to get the, you know, I want us to build the, I think there's too much lost on pretense or structure or process. Like, that's great. But the right answer will save us a lot of time. And so I think in an industry like ours, especially as competitive it is too, we have a process. But I believe life is mostly about an 80-20 rule. and being able to build into like what that 80-20 rule, you know, looks like is that we do need process.

1:25:28We do need structure in place, but we also need to build in the fact that the market's not going to wait 18 months for all of our products. And so we need the speed of market. We need to be able to get things to market, you know, in 12 months, nine months, six months, if the product's ready, if the story can get on board. And that shouldn't feel like a burden or a weight. It should feel like it's part of our processes, that we plan for 80, 85, 90 % of our business to be set and structured. And then we plan for this 10%. We plan for these free days. We plan for ourselves just to be able to think a little bit.

1:25:54I mean, the dynamic we're under Armory is today is that it's interesting. We have a guy who's running Asia Pacific for us, who has been in our industry for a long time. And he said, he goes, I get what's happening. Coming in, he's a year or so in. He's like, I now understand the brand. You guys were a brand who then became a company. And now we want to become a brand again. And I don't think I could explain it any more simply than that, is that, you know, when you look at the, we need the structure, we need the process, we need all those things, but that can't be dominating us, is that world-class financials don't lead to world-class brands.

1:26:33World-class brands lead to world-class financials. And this isn't some subtle way of me nodding at Wall Street and saying, don't worry, the earnings won't come. It's a very intentional approach to saying, like, the blueprint for brand is something that Under Armour effectively wrote in our first chapter. Now we did it with a lot of sort of that unbridled freshness of growth. Well, now we're a bit of a known quantity. And what's interesting about our brand is that nobody's mad at us. They just haven't heard from us in a long time. So we want to make sure that we do have that. I wouldn't say the first handshake, because many people, we've got good awareness.

1:27:06They're aware of us. But this next handshake we have with them, we want it to feel different. It's like when you're asking about some of my personality traits, it's like, I wanted to be an evolved personality. I don't expect to be that kid at 25. I'm a father of 21 and an 18-year-old, too, so being an example to them and modeling the behavior, modeling the behavior that I expect my teammates to live by, my partners, our vendors, and other people, I hold them accountable, and they hold me accountable, too. I want to ask you a little bit about the period where you weren't CEO, but you just mentioned being the father of an 18 and 21 year old.

1:27:47You talk about being lucky with Under Armour, super lucky with family as well. Before we get to kids, your wife, DJ. Explain just the role she played early on in the company. I mean, she's awesome. She built, you know, I'd say free labor. It would cost me dinner. It would cost me dinner after Valentine's Day and staying up for three days in a row. Pat was telling me yesterday about how you were butt dialing him repeatedly back in the day when you were out hawking roses on the street with DJ. And he was listening to you guys like game plan how to sell the last whatever number of roses. So that 1186 dozen flowers I described was meant to be 1500 dozen.

1:28:35Watching 314 dozen die on me wasn't an option. And so I had one of the guys in my senior year when I said, I'm going to go, we're going to blow it out this year. I'm going to make all this money. I've got this idea for Under Armour. I'm going to use the seed money to start the company. And we did. I ended up making about$16 ,000. But it should have been closer to$35 ,000. But I had a couple guys that were selling stands that didn't have permits. And so people shut them down. So I'm at the house. It's 4 o 'clock in the afternoon. It's February 14th. I've been up all day. And somebody comes back, and there's another 200 dozen flowers that we have.

1:29:09They're just sitting there. I'm watching them just going to wilt and die. So I was in Georgetown at Wisconsin in M, basically taking my car right by the exorcist steps in Georgetown as you come off a key bridge, back to my Ford Explorer down to the bottom, load it with as many boxes of flowers as I could. At 4 o 'clock or 4.30 in the afternoon, rush hour, I was just stopped, grabbed roses, and just started walking up and down and was selling flowers. Apparently, I butt-dialed Pat. And so he's got like this 25-minute somebody on the bridge of like, you know, roses for your wife,$30. I could do 20, right?

1:29:3815, you got the cash now. Give me two dozen for 30, you know? And I was just working the whole time. So he says he has this voicemail somewhere. And that's when it was expensive to call anybody. Oh, yeah, absolutely. It probably cost me more for the phone call than the flowers actually netted me by the end of that. How about what you learned about yourself through marriage? It's a partnership, right? And you're in this corporation of life that's meant to be built on love, number one. but you've got a job to do and you've got a responsibility. And that's to raise these incredible kids and giving them the best you can, the best thinking that we have.

1:30:18You learn trust. You learn sadness. You learn strength. You learn how to be smart. You learn that you're not invincible. And it's good to have somebody who's rooting for you. It's good to have your team. I've got I think about you know family like you know it's it's everything but then you think about these other concentric circles and I think about you know many of the athletes that we get to live with and deal with and they expect us to be one of those concentric circles like here's my high school friends here's my college friends you've got the circle maybe a church or whatever your religion following is.

1:31:03You've got these people that you go to a book club with and you've got your friends from work. And for consumers, you're like, yeah, I'm an Under Armour gal. I'm an Under Armour guy. They'll say one of the other brands, but that's what we're doing. We're building community. The lessons of family is one is a word that I say easily move to business. You have to be careful with that because you are running a business. but it should feel like a family environment. Everybody knows that they have to contribute to that family as well. And that it's like being on a team. It's that you don't have to be great every day because nobody is.

1:31:40It's not possible. But you got to be great a lot more days than you do. I call it deposits and withdrawals. You're coming in today. Great thing about being a team. You know, I could start my own company. I could go to something else. You could, but it's a really lonely place to be. And knowing that some days you need to come in, it's like, yeah, we expect you to deposit when you come into work and you give your best effort and you input that. But we also recognize there's some days where it's like, you know what, my dog's sick. I'm having trouble with my partner. My kid's not doing well in school.

1:32:07There's some days you do need to take. And that's what being a part of our community, that's what working at UA, being on our team is like. And hopefully we give that same sense of comfort or stability or security to people when they wear our brand to know that it's something better. How about the hardest part of being a parent?

1:32:29it's complicated you know I've got two great kids I got a son who's a junior at the University of Southern California and I get to live vicariously through him and and watching his journey and watching him grow up has been awesome of coming from a you know a boy graduating high school into becoming a man my daughter teaches me lessons every day you know number one is that she's not going to wear underwear just because dad works there. You know, like I got I got to earn it. And these are the reminders that we have and what we do each and every day, because I do want to impress them. You know, I do want them to fall in love.

1:33:06And and I do think about, you know, what they can give me back. But I think understanding empathy has been important, like understanding this consumer today. You know, our target demo is 16 to 24 years old. And, you know, having two kids that sit in the center of that, you know, that both played high school sports that understand athletics and athletes and mindset and sort of culture of where it is today. You know, it's incredibly instructive. It makes, you know, dinner conversation. It may be a little, you know, UA-centric. And I want to make sure it's not just asking about them for me, but it's asking about them for them.

1:33:39And I guess if I had to, from parenthood to my time away from the CEO chair, to being able to bring back this incredible sense of empathy. I was talking to Maryland's governor Moore yesterday about you, and he said he's kind of leaned on you in figuring out how to be a public parent. And then we get into just, you know, talking about kids a little bit. And I'm curious, you know, because of your success, you have the ability to create endless opportunities for your kids. How do you figure out what the balance is between that and doing it in a way that avoids dampening motivation? Affluenza. You want to be careful of allowing that ever to sink in.

1:34:24And how do you do it? You know, you don't shy away from it. You know, I spent a lot of time, you know, being a part of like being raising my family, our family in a town like Baltimore. You know, being able to have our kids grow up through what I thought would, I always wanted to just be this very clear lens. You have to be careful is because they do have the opportunity to do a lot of different things. There's two ways to take that. There's a kid that could be, you know, look what I have and be smug, be that guy, that gal that nobody likes. I've tried to do it just by maybe introducing or showing them to some of the best.

1:35:07like when you when you do meet be it a Stephen Curry or a Tom Brady or Jordan Spieth there's such an intensity with like the intentionality they have like this is one thing I think this might be news breaking but anybody you speak to that has dealt with celebrity at the highest levels or much better it's better said than celebrity excellence those that are great is like they have the ability to just like lock into you you know when you talk to these guys it's like, hey, how you doing? And it's like an uncomfortable amount of time. Like, am I really, like, I'm right here and I'm present and I'm here for you the entire time.

1:35:43There's nothing else that exists in the world. I'm just focused on you. I think it's probably a pretty good rule for life is that being present is something that I always, I always, if people ask for like, give me, what are keys to success? It's like, it's not being the person at the party who's looking over the shoulder and trying to find somebody else, but being right here. It's not being, you know, I'm above this. I'm too big for this. I'm here right now. So I'm going to engage in whatever that activity is. I think that my kids have done an awesome job. They got a great group of friends and it's certainly not perfect.

1:36:13My daughter, I'm looking forward to her being able to start a university and be able to you know start a brand new chapter too because it's one thing that from having gone to three different high schools, like I feel at each one of those stages I was able to reintroduce myself. I remember able to take you know whether it was a roommate or an experience I had with somebody and maybe I wouldn't give them credit at the time but I maybe would take some of those skills from one high school and I try to apply it to myself like being a better roommate, being neater at Maryland, like cleaning yourself up.

1:36:44Like this the hyper learning of I know that I went through from 14, 15, 16 years old to becoming that next that next person that I wanted to be. You know an incredibly important journey. My kids have done an awesome job at it too and but like all of us they are works in process too and so they're not gonna be perfect but we're gonna love them no matter what. The time you weren't CEO. I kind of went through and tried to pick out the toughest quote I could find to then kind of get your thoughts on it. September 2024, the Wall Street Journal writes, more than half a dozen former executives said Plank was responsible for much of the turmoil and complexity that he's now promising to clean up.

1:37:30In recent years, they say he foiled marketing plans put in place by others, pushed product ideas that flopped, blurred the lines between his brand role and that of the CEOs who succeeded him. Your thoughts? What a crazy journey life is. And so everybody's got an opinion. And the reality from where people will feel are always going to be divergent. And so I don't like our stock price right now. Our shareholders sure don't like our stock price right now. What we're doing about that is creating seismic change. And it's building off the assets we have. By seismic change, I don't mean it's not how do we just start over, but it is certainly a turnaround.

1:38:20I, since really probably 2019 or so, you've seen when I left the CEO chair at the end of 19, our stock was in a very different position. Coming back in, it was not quite the size where it is now. And the ambition we have is not looking and trying to point fingers because this isn't about diagnosing the problem. Like we know what the issue is. Purchase power is important for us. making kids fall in love with us, making that 16 to 24 year old demographic love UA is the number one ambition that we have. And the one thing about finding success, being able to like, you know, crack to the next level is that you're always going to have critics, especially when you have a public stock.

1:39:03It doesn't make any one right. It doesn't make any one wrong. But like you have to listen to it. Some of the best advice that I've ever had was actually somebody who's in the public, in the public scene or the public picture. And I'd asked Jeff Bezos from Amazon. In like 2014 or so, they were getting hit on all these same topics. You're a big company, you're in culture, and this isn't saying anything other than just like, what's some of the best advice you've heard of like how to deal when people want to, you know, take shots? And by the way, I can tell when even just reading that, it bothers you.

1:39:41Well, criticism is going to bother anybody. If you didn't, you weren't human. And like to find, I said, hopefully I can bring some of this to my next chapter of what it feels like. What I'd say about, he said, whenever you get criticism, I said, what do you do? Because you guys are getting hit on like, you know, the culture is bad. And when people say that is like, can you talk about that? It's an organization of 16 ,000 people. Of course, there's going to be bad interaction. But like the standard, the culture, the worst behavior we'll tolerate is something I think that would be an aspiration anywhere.

1:40:13and I'm really proud of that. But like the advice that I got is that when you hear criticism, I ask, I said, what do you do? You know, when all these criticism, they're always writing bad stories about you and how do you keep up with it? How do you process it? The answer was the first thing I do is I ask myself if it's true. You know, like think about that where you sit back and from being defensive and you're like, I can see your body language that bothers you. It's like, yeah, of course it does. Like, this is talking about the brand is a... And your baby. Yeah, of course, it's a baby, but you want to be great.

1:40:51You want to do the best you can, but you're never going to get great unless you do quality control, unless you sit back and watch tape and figure out what you could do better. Like, the only thing that matters right now is that we do it in a team. We treat our team fairly. We treat our consumers and do the best we can with innovation for making the best products in the world and doing it in a culture that everybody's really proud of. There's no room or acceptance for some of the things that have been said. And if there's a company that's been vetted, so opinions and let's take everything at face level.

1:41:20Maybe they're right. Well, we've been vetted. We've been through six plus years of SEC investigation. Like we've lived through this process. And there's nothing but a really proud company who's ready to get on doing exactly what it's the best in the world at. And that's making the world's best performance apparel, footwear, and accessories for consumers to just make them just a little bit better, a little bit faster, jump a little higher, run a little faster. When you hear some of the industry analysts that came out, when you came back saying, how can this guy help fix the problems he helped create, you think what?

1:41:58I think work on the brand that was created by a team of people that I was lucky enough to be able to pull together and pull through. You know, at the end of 2019, I stepped down from the CEO chair. My son was starting high school. I finished freshman year, and my daughter was beginning and going into junior high. I finally wanted the chance to be able to actually speak to my kids, watch my kids play sports. And we were just getting a bunch, a lot of heat from a lot of different places. There was no pressure. This was totally voluntary in order to make a decision. And I was like, I'm open. I want the best.

1:42:38I'm a fiduciary for shareholders. I want the best thing for the company. If there's a better path that would work, I'd be more than in favor of it. And so that's when I said, okay, let's let somebody else do it. And I'll focus on, I'll focus on family. I'll focus on watching, watching my kids grow up. And I want to be helpful. I want to be added to the company. But being the CEO is very different from being a chairman and making sure that people had the chance to be successful. That's incredibly important. And that may always be some he said, she said but i the only intent i would ever have is what's the best interest of the company but by the way we did a filming with uh howard schultz the starbucks founder uh we're with him in italy in seattle fascinating guy similarly uh uber successful and he talked about how um you know he famously left running the company then came back a few times and how it was just challenging for him watching somebody else, you know, run it.

1:43:40Governor Moore was telling me yesterday, conversations with you, you know, you didn't fully appreciate kind of that challenge. Like, take me into that period and just what's that like? It doesn't have a sense of, oh my gosh, how are they making this choice? I really just want Under Armour to win. I guess I want to make sure that like that's clear. Now, people can question saying, well, that's not helpful for it. That's not additive to it. You know, in my time off, we've you know, I was I put myself in basically a product role where it was. I stepped down at the end of 19 in March 16th of 2020, the pandemic hit.

1:44:19And so first thing I did is went to work on building the Under Armour sports mask. We ended up selling close to 20 million of these things, you know, which is one of the things that allowed us to stay in business, to keep our cash position high, to keep things running. You know, getting engaged in product is it's my love. It's my passion. But like someone else running the day to day administrative is that I'm never opposed to someone else running. I honestly I'm not opposed to someone else running the company if we were doing really well right now where we are. I'm the right person at the right time to lead this company.

1:44:54How long is that? A year, two years, three years? We're going to flip backs like cornhole style. We're not trying to throw mile-long passes. We're going to keep everything very reasonable of just making little tosses and just make sure that every day is better than the one in front of it. What would you like it to be? I'd like it to be number one on every kid's Christmas list this holiday. I'd love it to be the earnings and the bottom line and the pricing power that would really come with this brand. I think we have an innovation story that is just like one of the best kept secrets in the world.

1:45:27I don't think we've done a great job telling the story of this brand. And there's so much good. And so the ability for someone, don't believe everything you read. But there's always truth within all of that. And that's one thing is what I said is that I'll read and evaluate everything and say, is it true? Is there something we can do better there? Because I am a constant work in process. Like all of us, all we want to do is be the best versions of ourselves. But we're better than that. You know, this is a brand that has broken through to play at the highest levels of competition, competing with the biggest brands in sports.

1:45:57Now it has smaller brands coming after us as well. You know, we can argue, or someone could say, who's the best person for it? Well, I'm in the chair, and so I get the privilege to run this company. And I got a pretty good point of view with 30 years of experience in this industry, and 15 of them as a public company CEO. So that's pretty unique and something which I think will play to our benefit in years come. What do you think the best lesson is that you learned from kind of the tough period? Forgive yourself, right? Stop trying to be perfect. You're not going to make everybody happy. Because at the time you beat yourself up when...

1:46:40Yeah, and you're saying, what could we have done? What would have happened better that way? The best thing that I think I can bring to this job or the experience that I have is that entrepreneur mindset of like, it doesn't matter what you had. Like this is, every day you come to work and you basically, you start over as, old example, MacGyver. You know, I'll take whatever, let's take all the toys we have, lay them on the table and say, what are the ones that are best gonna help us accomplish the mission for the day? And make sure we have those pieces in place. Could I read correctly? You use a BlackBerry example in meeting things on occasion?

1:47:17Yeah, but it was more relevant when BlackBerry was it in 2015 or 16. And so they became complacent. They stopped innovating. They thought that they had everything fixed. And the one thing that is true in our world, especially in sports and culture and athletes and trend and all these things that matter, is that the world's going to keep moving. It's going to move at a really fast rate. And so the speed at which we can never be satisfied, Complacency is one of the most dangerous things. It's the, you know, you want to be careful of internal fighting. You want to be careful of complacency. Is that this organization needs to think about what the next chapter looks like because we're not where we want to be right now.

1:47:56And the team that we're putting in place is one that understands that. And the team that's existing there isn't like we're getting, you know, get rid of the team. No, no, let's inspire the team. Let's empower the team. Let's give them the tools they need to be successful. That's what the next chapter for us looks like. And in fairness, you're a competitive guy. You're probably never going to be where you want to be because you're always going to be looking towards how you, you know, drive stuff forward. Right? Yeah. I mean, I'll I'll I'll feel some of that. But again, hopefully, you know, God forbid in this next chapter, I'm able to bring some wisdom into it.

1:48:28You know, I'm not the 35 year old guy who's just charging down the hill. And, you know, it's a difficult thing about whether it's criticism or anything else. I've been in the same place-ish for 30 years, right? It's not like I moved from seven different jobs and you're trying to find other sources like, oh yeah, the Under Armour guy. So that's going to have its advantages and it's going to have its disadvantages. The advantages really outweigh the disadvantages a lot. And that doesn't mean that people aren't going to be able to take pop shots or say things about you. And some of which may be true in its own light.

1:48:59But it doesn't mean that the intention or the love or the respect, more importantly, just like the standard, the standard. So we've been through it. So like I've been tested. Yeah. Like I've been tested a lot. It doesn't mean like, oh, poor Kevin. I'm not expecting that. I'm not asking for that. But like, I don't know. I've earned the right to be in this chair today. Well, and frankly, you've always put your money where your mouth is and you've taken more risk than anybody. Sure. How challenging does the current tariff environment make things? It's just uncertainty. You know, rising tide raises all boats and the lowering tide does the same.

1:49:44And so we're in an industry with what we pay for a sneaker is going to be the exact same duty as somebody else trying to compete with us in this country. So that'll be a fair playing field. We just want to know what the rules are. And so that's something of given to give ourselves a time for that information to come out. But we don't know what it'll be. How do you view tariffs? I mean, I just want to, we just want to know where it is. I mean, I want to make sure that we can lock in with the, what the appropriate, just for pricing will be. That's the one thing for our shareholders is that, you know, we had a great plan coming out of last year and planning into the year.

1:50:17And so tariffs is going to put a little bit of a wrinkle into that. So let's find out what that means. But as of today, nobody knows anything. By the way, a great quote I found that I think ties into the revitalization of Baltimore, but I think connects kind of nicely to tariffs and actually give you a lot of credit for it. This was from a number of years ago. You said we have 250 ,000 people making Under Armour something at any given moment. In the next three years, we'll add another 200 ,000 plus. And zero of them are pegged to come back to the US because we're all chasing cheap labor all over Malaysia and the far corners of the earth.

1:50:55It's a crime. We couldn't find a way to get 1 ,000 jobs back here or 5 ,000 jobs or 10 ,000 jobs. When you look at what's happening in Ferguson, what's happening in Baltimore, it's jobs. We need jobs. And we're shedding all our jobs to other places. The ability for us to bring that back, that's the big idea. Yeah. Well, that was interesting. Well, that was from a speech opening our Project Glory, which is when we'd spent, as I said, the first six years of the company manufacturing exclusively in the United States. And I mentioned the garment district that today where 50 % of our production in the U.S.

1:51:28is like, again, today less than one, it doesn't exist. We've been working at this for a long time. It doesn't take the administration or anyone else to say, wouldn't it be great if we had manufacturing here? What's the practical solution, you think, to all this? Well, we tried it. I guess that's where I'd start from, is that we could take a new tack, but we basically viewed that without government subsidy, actually making a profitable product. Because if you put the way our business works, If we're going to sell a, let's call it a shoe for$100. It means that the shoe costs$100 at retail. It means we sell it to a wholesaler at$50.

1:52:04We make the shoe for effectively half of that price,$25. So basically new tariffs add any amount of money. So if that shoe, if that tariff, if the dollar amount goes from$25 to costing us$35, it's now a$35 cost shoe. That means we sell it to our wholesale partner at$70, and they're reselling that product for$140. That delta between the two of them, that's what the consumer will be paying. We've tried running this play in the United States. Not to say it's impossible, but we couldn't make it work. Because the consumer doesn't want to pay more. Well, the consumer's not going to pay more. Made in the USA, we haven't seen it have the net effect.

1:52:44But that's not an absolute statement either. There's places for it, and there's pockets for it. There's places that we absolutely can. And so this will be in partnership with our state, local, and federal officials of finding out, like, what's the best way? Because everyone's jobs here, but these are tough jobs. That it's a generational and a cultural thing in order to get back in it. And you really have to commit, like towns have to commit, that we're going to be a manufacturing town. On that front, I want to just speak to your efforts in terms of the revitalization of Baltimore. and I thought it'd be a good kind of closing topic for the sit down today.

1:53:25What's been your motivation for doing all this? God gave me a lot. I'm incredibly grateful for that. Sitting on a beach somewhere didn't feel like the right way to sort of pay it forward. My ambition was around 2006, 2007, we were too big. to move anywhere. We love this city. I love the identity of grit that it gave to this brand. This ambition that I'd had is that I get it through something that says you know if you make it in life the cool kids I'll meet you in LA I'll meet you in New York. I think that's one thing but what if instead we made them all have to come to us? Like what if we we made and helped build on a city standpoint the next Portland, the next Austin, the next Nashville and I look at this Northeast corridor, I look at this city 30 miles from DC, two hours and 12 minutes on the cello train to New York.

1:54:23And I'm like, there's something awesome here. There's a, there's a grit, there's a culture, but it's an incredible place to live. The quality of life is extraordinary. And I'm like, I think you could tell that story. And being able to anchor it with the, you know, the coolest athletic brand in the world that would be based here. And if it was visible from 95, and that created this ambition called Baltimore Peninsula, which is something that now anchors our new headquarters building we just moved into about six or seven months ago. And it's been incredible. It is meant to be the living physical manifestation of walking into a sports brand.

1:54:56You know, we're unfortunately a city that is too often taxed by the HBO miniseries that appeared more than 20 years ago that people are like, oh, yeah, I know that city. That's not the vision that we have. And I think there's something that's very much in place, especially what's happening today, because the cool kids, the new kids, the great ones, They're calling us. They want to be a part of this brand. Governor Moore and I were talking about this a bit too yesterday in that there seems to be a level of cynicism when somebody of note steps forward with a community idea, regardless of how amazing it might be.

1:55:34Almost puts a target on your back. And I'm wondering, like, what's that been like for you? Well, one of the things I believe in is keeping the main thing the main thing. I'm in a clearing my line item list mode today because I've done a lot of interesting things from horse racing to a whiskey business to hotels where we're sitting right now to these really neat things. But keeping the main thing, the main thing is what my number one focus and priority is right now. And it's not even like is it distracting to me or is it something else, but the way it makes other people potentially feel. Jack, the former Notre Dame athletic director I was talking to yesterday, said, even if for no other reason than perception is distraction, like you wanted to, you're like, screw that.

1:56:23I want these assets. It just doesn't make sense. Yeah, the most important things in my life are my family, my friends, and this brand, and making sure that there's no question on any of that. And so putting all of my priority and energy. Apparently, I got to beat some old headlines down. It's not worth it. It's not worth the energy. And so removing any of that fuel from other places and leaving that, you know, with myself, I own it, you know, and that's it. But ultimately, I'm responsible. And I not only accept that, like, I thrive on that. I want to bring it back to Baltimore. You just get word that the seven-acre parcel that you'd been eyeing for the new Under Armour headquarters isn't going work out how much of your own money do you spend over the course of the following few years buying up how much land yeah i mean it's 266 acres that was assembled for the baltimore peninsula project and it has been an endeavor you know i i look at um you know some big visionaries um disney had a massive vision like las vegas was built on the on the shoulders of big vision um but sheikh muhammad built in Dubai was an old fishing town, you know, 40 years before that he turned one day and said, what if there was a skyline right there?

1:57:40And I thought that kind of blind ambition was the things that would, that's what leadership requires. And something I took a lot of pride in, I felt like a responsibility. What? Because I've been given so much. You know, it's an endeavor where you do feel this obligation to give back, to participate with the community. And frankly, it's a worthy cause. Don't you take away just this love and affection for the city of Baltimore as much as maybe like just relate with the, you know, your audience and saying like, it's a love and affection for wherever you're from. You know, I mean, how much do you love St.

1:58:15Louis and you meet somebody from St. Louis and you just finished telling me like why your next interview is so important to you because you guys share the same zip code when you grew up. And there's something about that affinity. And there's something about, you know, when you meet somebody who's from St. Louis, they tell you they're a Yankee fan. And you're like, oh, what are you kidding me? I love where I'm from. People typically love where they're from. And I respect people that love and appreciate, respect and do the best they can for where they're from. And so I'm very proud of what that means.

1:58:44I'm fortunate enough to be the CEO of Under Armour because without UA being great, nothing else works. It's a requirement for it. And so that's why for me, I feel so blessed and honored and appreciative to have this opportunity, to run the company that I founded, but I don't walk in with an entitlement that says I have to be here. We have a chance of doing this with the city, but I'm not going to do it alone. I mean, the company's not going to do it alone. It's going to take an entire community. And so leaning on the wings of this broader city is one of the calls to action that I always have. And if I could make this not just a Baltimore sentiment, but to anyone out there, it's like the public-private partnership, the ability for communities to work with companies.

1:59:30It's like reading a negative headline. There's no ambition that someone's trying to dupe someone over. And I'm sure there's bad actors in life, and we've seen it happen before, and there's the Enron stories of the world. But most people, I believe, and even getting in those small rooms, are people always curious, like, I'm not in the room when it happens, so I just don't trust. Trust is a very special thing. It's something that's actually built in drops and lost in buckets. over the time, over a course of 30 years in a career, there's going to be times that you'll build on that trust, build on that trust.

2:00:01There'll be times that somebody says, you know what, you might have cost me something there. I can accept that. But all I can do is I can just go back to work and just show up again and just start depositing one drop at a time. Baltimore, I think, is a bit of the resume that I put for this company of, don't just leave it about this city, but anybody's city. Wouldn't you love to have someone who appreciates, respects, and works as hard for their community because I think that's one thing that we'll find is that it's pretty much unimpeachable that this brand loves this town. That I'm deeply committed to the place where the brand was you know quote unquote founded, although we moved from DC to get here.

2:00:43But what we're building is really special and I respect how unique that is and the opportunity we have for this next chapter. So you know we've done a good job of covering the past, but we got a hell of a story to show you what's coming in the future. How cool has it been for you to see third-party development now around the new campus? I mean, it's a new energy that gets people to think differently. And what was so important was the co-location to 95. You know, we live in a city who, unfortunately, a little more than a year ago, you know, we watched the bridge that's named after the author of our national anthem crumble into to the Baltimore Harbor like a rector set.

2:01:26You know what's pretty interesting is that four months later, we opened our brand new sparkling headquarters that's perfectly visible from 95, which used to host about 60 million cars a year. I haven't gotten the latest numbers yet, but I think it's gotta be closer to 80 or 90 million a year. And when they drive through town, hopefully their thought is, oh yeah, remember that show we're going through Baltimore, not that HBO thing, what was it called again? But they're just saying, oh look there's the hottest coolest sports brand in the world look their base right here must be an awesome place to live if we do that we're doing our job in what ways has dan gilbert been an example he's been an inspiration he's a brilliant man um i think what he's done and given and i maybe could use it uh in in detroit that um you know there's there's a great slogan that dan's team came up with there's say nice things about detroit um and i'd encourage people as well I'll say nice things about Dan Gilbert.

2:02:18He's a very special man who cares at a deep level. And he was. I think he had a blueprint for imagine if you could take a company. And based on our growth and our success, I can move that. And I can base that in a downtown that was blighted and basically forgotten about. A lot of that ambition was the same, but it's different. So I don't know how this whole thing turns out. But I'm 30 years in, and hopefully I have several more years or decades. And I'm not declaring how long I'll be doing this. but we're going to get it right, that's for sure. And lastly, independent of Under Armour, in terms of what you're doing with the development here, you're kind of building a neighborhood from scratch.

2:03:02I know you said you don't know where it'll end up, but what's your vision for that? It was, again, when I drive north on 95, you drive through those places in Philly, and you saw this old port industrial land off to the right-hand side. You're like, why is that just port industrial? Man, that would make great living. And I looked in our own backyard, and as the driver was growing, I was like, we're expanding, and we need to do, we're going to need more room. We need more space. We're landlocked in the old location where we were. And it was like, imagine instead of us just finding just the best headquarters, let's still do the best thing for shareholders and always keep that in mind.

2:03:40But imagine if we could tie that to a bigger vision. Imagine if we could help change the perception of this town, because I believe that any brand, especially consumer-facing brands, aren't just going to be judged on, you know, the consumer is going to judge them on, like, not only what they sell, but what they do for their community, you know? And so that's where us being able to be a bit of this flag of saying, like, take another look at this town. And again, there's many Baltimores that are out there, but, like, I don't think that the world should live just somewhere between, you know, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and maybe Miami or Dallas.

2:04:15Like, I think that we should be bigger than a five or, I'm sorry, Chicago, a five or six city town. Like, I think that it's where our strength is. And, you know, look, this is where home is for us, too. And we've got an awesome place that we're bringing family. So this is a recruiting video as much as anything. And whether you're zingers or not, you know, hit me, but, you know, we're ready to invite the best of them, you know, come join us on this mission. We've got some pretty good ones who've, you know, picked up that challenge so far. Thanks for doing this. Thanks, Graham. Good to see you. Thanks for listening to this week's podcast.

2:04:47Don't forget to leave a rating and review. And for more in-depth interviews, visit grahambensinger.com. you