Joe Kudla: How Joe Kudla Built Vuori: The Playbook for Category-Defining Athleisure | E173

21:35Randall Kaplan:So talking about a different path, You pull any magazine cover today of female magazines like Vogue or Harper's Bazaar, whatever it may be. And supermodels were discovered by typically someone going up to them in a shopping mall when they were younger, 14, come do a photo shoot. You had a strange turn and the research here conflicts. Either some woman saw you walking out of the ocean with your shirt off in La Jolla saying, hey, man, you should be a model. or you went to a casting call and did that. What's the story there and how did you become a model? Yeah, so both of them are true. It was my senior year of high school, or excuse me, my senior year of college.

22:17And I was surfing in La Jolla. And sure enough, I was walking to my car and a woman approached me and asked me if I'd ever considered modeling. And I kind of chuckled because wasn't interested in it. But she told me that her son was working with this local talent manager in La Jolla. You know, he spent the last year just traveling around Europe. And she's like, even if you did it for three months, it was like, it's been transformational for my son. He's loved it. She's like, can I just introduce you to his manager? And so I said, sure, I'll, you know, I'll take a meeting because, you know, here I was a senior.

22:47I had already gotten my job, which started in the fall. I graduated in May, but I had until October. So I had five months off and I was either going to wait tables or figure something out to do. But I was like, well, if I could go to Europe, I'd never traveled. I'd never been overseas. and so this sounded like an intriguing opportunity. So anyway, I took a meeting with this guy and he just said, look, I'll pay for everything. We're gonna take some photos. I'd love to share them with this agency. We have this group coming from Milan in a couple months. They're gonna do a casting. They're gonna meet a lot of kids from San Diego and they're gonna pick a handful of them to go back and work for their agency in Milan for the summer fashion shows.

23:25So he was like, it can't hurt. So anyway, I took some photos. I went to the casting. I met this agency. I think I made some little jokes and we hit it off and they liked me. And so they selected me as one of the folks from San Diego to go to Milan. And so, yeah, that was the start of this whole new chapter. And like, that was a moment in my life. I never would have thought would have completely changed the course of my life.

23:48Randall Kaplan:So we need to get some of those photos when we post a clip for the show, for sure. So I'm going to, you still have some photos. I'm sure you have the photos. I'm I'm in a dusty box in my garage somewhere. We got to dust off the box. A lot of people think modeling is so sexy. My wife grew up in Fresno. People came up to her when she was 14. You should model. And her parents owned a clothing store. So she modeled for the clothing store. But she went to business school at USC. And her parents said, we want you to get that degree first. And then you can model if that's what you choose to do afterwards.

24:20Randall Kaplan:She ended up working on Wall Street. And then she modeled on the side. But modeling is not all sexy. You're sitting there staying in shitty motels. You're going in front of people. Joe, look like this or look like this. Turn this way. People are inspecting you. And maybe one person, maybe five people looking at your body or your face. And you're getting rejected. The rejection rate sometimes is 99%. So tell us your experience as a model. Was that what it was like? And then how rejection influenced your future? Yeah. I mean, you said it spot on. I think just to hit the rejection point first, you know, it really teed me up for a career of rejection.

24:58And I think, you know, it's like baseball, you know, you bat 300, you're an all-star, you know, it's like kind of the same type of theme with like modeling or sales or entrepreneurship. Like you're going to fail 90 % of the time, but that 10 % can create a lot of value. Modeling was the first time it was just like constant rejection. and it was a bit of an ego bruise, but like ultimately you develop a thick skin and that set me up for a career ultimately where I tried out sales for a while and we can talk about that at another time, but I do think it was incredibly empowering for that reason. Modeling was definitely not glamorous.

25:35Like, you know, I got my diploma, I took a red item along, I went to the agency, I still had all my bags and they were like, you need to be at these castings today, go, here's a map. This is like before you had smartphones. So I'm wandering around Milan. It's 100 degrees. I'm pouring sweat. And I have to go and find these like addresses. And you'd show up and there'd be a line of 100 people out a door. And you'd sit in the blazing sun just waiting for somebody. You'd go up. You'd present your portfolio. They'd flip through it. And they'd say, thank you for coming. And you'd leave. And you'd go to the next one.

26:06And you would do that five, sometimes 10 times a day. And then your agent would call randomly out of nowhere and be like, hey, you're confirmed for this job tomorrow. You wouldn't even know which casting it was, but you'd book some job and then you'd travel somewhere. Whatever the job entailed, you'd do the job. Oftentimes, very little pay. You're living in a little model apartment with 15 other guys from all around the world. They're all different ages and backgrounds. It's no luxury lifestyle. But it was like I was 21 years old at the time. I was meeting people from around the world. I was traveling on the weekends.

26:43And it was an incredible experience. What I didn't realize at the time is that I was being exposed to an industry that was very intriguing to me, that would stay with me. After I quit the modeling, it was a part of me now that I couldn't shake and ultimately led me to my career.

27:03Randall Kaplan:What was your first job? What was your best job? And what was the lowest paying job to the highest paying job? As a model. As a model. There weren't a lot of high paying jobs, you know, but I would say the first job that I booked was working as a fit model for Dolce & Gabbana. All of the underwear for Dolce & Gabbana that they were going to release in that future season, I was the fit model for. So I was doing all that. And then that led - So tell people people don't know what that is. So explain what a fit model is. So a fit model, I'm proud to say I'm still the fit model here at Viore today.

27:38So a job that stayed with me all these years. But essentially a fit model, it's like when you go to a tailor to get fitted for a suit, you are the person wearing the suit. The tailor adjusts the fit of the garment to fit your body. You know, if you have certain types of measurements, you make a good fit model because you represent, you know, a certain fit that the designer is going for. And so they fit the garment to you and then they commercialize it and sell it.

28:04Randall Kaplan:So what was the craziest moment you had at a mom? I mean, my wife was a model. She still does some modeling. We know a lot of friends. When I was single, I learned a little bit about the modeling industry, including from one supermodel who has crazy stories. Yeah. Do you have any crazy stories of when you were modeling? I don't have anything that like is probably, you know, I don't have a story that you're probably looking for that's earth shattering. But I do remember the first big fashion show that I booked. I was walking down the runway and there was this really popular rapper at the time named Ja Rule.

28:40I don't know if you remember Ja Rule. But Ja Rule was rapping on the stage as we're walking up and down and there's champagne everywhere. And it was just this huge party environment. And I just remember like thinking to myself, like, how did I get here? You know, like, where am I? So I had a lot of moments like that, but nothing, yeah, nothing too dramatic.

29:01Randall Kaplan:I hope you're enjoying this video so far, but before we jump back in, I want to know if you've ever thought about what you need to do to reach another level of success in your life. Over the last 25 years, I've been an advisor to more than 50 companies. I've invested nearly 100, including Google Lyft and Seagate, and I also co-founded a company that today is worth more than$15 billion. I've been incredibly blessed in my journey, and at this stage of my life, I want to give back. I want to share the lessons I've learned so you can reach incredible success way faster than I did. In my own journey, I've learned that having the right mentor is a massive advantage to achieving our goals.

29:34Randall Kaplan:I'm hugely passionate about mentoring others. I'm looking for a few hungry entrepreneurs who are excited to take action on their journey to incredible future success. So if that's you, I've got an opportunity. In the description of this video, there's a link where you can apply to work with me. All you need to do is answer a few simple questions. And if you're a good fit, my team will reach out so we can build a game plan together. All right, now let's get back to the video. What lesson or lessons did you learn from modeling that no business degree would have taught you? Well, I think it's the difference between knowledge and wisdom.

30:02Like, you know, you can take a marketing class and understand that brands tell stories and that you have to have like a communications framework for your brand. But then when you actually work as part of the system, you actually see the cameras, the photographers, the environments. so you understand the work that went into creating the image of a brand. And then when you see it come together with copy and the story around it, you were a part of bringing this marketing message or this marketing asset to life. And so you can be taught that in a textbook, but for me being actually a part of it was incredibly empowering because I started to understand like, oh, this photographer you could actually hire for this amount of money and like you just need an environment like this and this is how the clothes get brought onto set and this is how the hair and makeup work and it's nothing transformational but it was just this idea of embodied wisdom.

31:00You were a part of it so you have a familiarity with it and then it becomes more empowering that you think to yourself like I could do this. I think that was like the biggest thing that that chapter of my life gave me was I didn't love being in front of the camera. I was not a natural model but I got exposure to designers and how they worked with textiles to create garments and how they would adjust and pin the garments to make them fit right. And then how those garments would be used to create, used in a photo shoot to create an image for a brand and how they would promote the product. And I think all of that was just fascinating to me.

31:37I was like, I always had loved textiles. I'd love the feeling of product. And I loved how, you know, my mother was a psychologist, for me, it was like there was a bit of psychology in there and like how you can connect with an audience through a product. That was fascinating to me. And so those were the things that I took with me and ultimately became an itch that I had to scratch in my career.

32:00Randall Kaplan:A lot of us take jobs just for a stepping stone. You do two years modeling, come back, EY, earn a CPA. Ultimately, you left. You said you weren't passionate about what you were doing. How important should passion be a motivation as we start our career or continue our career? And what if you're not passionate about what you're doing? Look, I think it's a double-edged sword. I think in a lot of respects, sometimes just getting in and getting great experience is a great way to start. And there should be no shame in that. Everybody today wants to be living out the tip of the spear, most aspirational, perfect aligned thing that they're doing every day.

32:39And sometimes that's not a reality, but that can be something that maybe you don't see how that leads to the next thing. But again, if you show up with devotion, it's not about what you do, it's about how you do it. And that's something we talk about at Viore all the time. It's like leading with that craftsman's mentality, like doing meaningful work, making a great product, whether it's a jacket that we're making, or it's like you manage a process or you reconcile accounts. Whatever you do, bringing passion and dedication and devotion and a positive attitude to your work, it can be incredibly rewarding when you look at your work as a devotion to something bigger than just that one thing.

33:19For me, that was always the highest value. When I got into my career, I wasn't incredibly passionate about being an accountant, but it was an incredible learning opportunity that led me to my next thing. And I actually didn't find my passion in my career until, gosh, I was in my 30s. So, you know, about 10 years in is when I really started to find a role and a rhythm where I knew that my passion could become a career.

33:50Randall Kaplan:So let's talk about the start of your career in the clothing business. While you're at EY, like so many of us who want to go into a different field, sometimes it's not great to leave your job until you have a new job. So you experiment things. You started a women's apparel business with an ex-girlfriend. It's called Sammy Joe. Joe, your first name, Sammy, her middle name. What was the experience like? Why did you stop? So I had come back from Milan and got my job, begged for my job back with Ernst & Young. And so they took me a couple of years late, but I started in their audit practice. I started identifying more as like a creative.

34:23Like I'd had this experience in Milan and I'm not just an accountant. Like there's a creative in there, but I didn't know how to connect with that creative. I'd never taken an art class or never been a designer or never, you know, I just was always a jock or an athlete. I met a woman who was graduating from design school. We were getting serious. And instead of her going and taking a job in LA and us being a part, I just said, I just had this experience modeling. Like I would love to start a line. Why don't you design the clothes? I'll help you with the business side. You know, I'll use my$45 ,000 a year salary at Ernst & Young to fund the business very naively.

34:59So we decided that we would start our first line together and we called it Sammy Joe. And it was an incredible experience. You know, we're very ignorant. We didn't really understand the ins and outs of the business at the time, but you know, we would go to LA on the weekends and we would work with jobbers that had excess fabric laying around. So we would buy that excess fabric and then we would work with local pattern makers here in San Diego to make a pattern. She would sketch a skirt or a dress or a top. We would take it to the pattern maker. They would help us make a pattern. Then we would take it down to a cutter on our lunch break, make it into panels and take all these cut panels of fabric down to a sewer.

35:41And the sewer would make it up. And then we would have a sample. We would do a fitting with that. You know, we learned how to adjust the pattern and then we got a collection put together. And then we would drive up and down the coast. And this is before you could sell on the internet. And we would sell to these little boutiques up and down the coast. And those boutiques were like feeding grounds into like the next tier of distribution, which would be like a Barney's. And then if you got into a Barney's, you could then get the attention of Nordstrom. And it was kind of like the path that you would go down to build a clothing brand.

36:11And so we were on that path. And it was an incredible learning experience. But we quickly learned after a couple of years that while it was really cute stuff, we were just like running on fumes. and we didn't have the investment. I don't think we were actually set up to really scale with the way that we were managing production. But I learned a lot about like, okay, if I was to do this again, these are the things I would do differently. And so I ended up taking a lot of those lessons into my next venture.

36:38Randall Kaplan:We have two kids, eight and five. And my wife, as I mentioned, her parents owned a clothing store. So she would help pick the designs for the next season. You know, she's cool and has good fashion style. And so year and a half after we met, she started clothing on called madtown collection it was simple silk blouses skirts and i'm going to get it all wrong and she's going to yell at me for not explaining it properly but like you we went downtown to buy remnant fabric i guess it's what it's called and we go to these warehouses and just to give people a sense of what we're talking about these are large cavernous warehouses and she was buying silk so they're silk rolls yeah and we're basically going through 500 silk rolls to figure out what fabric to use.

37:21Randall Kaplan:Hiring a pattern maker, you have to go and figure out who do you recommend, who do you recommend they charge you by pattern for those people who don't recommend it. And then in all of my brilliance and toughness as a good businessman, I get on the phone with one of the pattern makers and you pay for each pattern they make. And so you can have a package of five. And I'm just talking about this because most people don't know what's involved when you started a clothing brand. And so I get on the phone with this woman who it's hard to find the right person, right? At each stage, there's a different person who's right for where you are in your production cycle.

37:56Randall Kaplan:So there's not a lot of people who want to work with somebody new. Maybe there's three or four that we got recommendations for. You go, you meet with them in person. So Madison does all this work and I get involved. I'm the business person. So I call the woman up on the phone and say, Hey, you know, why does this cost so much money? Will you do it for, I don't know, I made it up 30 % less. And she basically called my wife and said, Hey, man, I don't want to work with you. Like, this is this is not business. I said, Okay, I'm out of the business. And I said, Okay, you're not part of this anymore.

38:22Randall Kaplan:But it's, it's tough. You know, it was a solo project that she did. She did all the labels herself. I ran and it was hard to get into stores, you basically find influencer people who send things to celebrities hoping that they where your product. The way it works is most people keep them for themselves and don't get them to the celebrities. That's a whole thing. It's expensive to pay for these people. Ultimately, she got into Planet Blue, which is a great store based in Los Angeles. They expanded into seven stores. They ultimately went bankrupt, sold their private equity firm, and then we had kids.

38:59Randall Kaplan:So it's kind of on hold right now and we'll see what happens. But I've lived that experience and it's fun. She'd be up to one in the morning doing the barcodes and to get into a store, there's a 20 page questionnaire. And it's crazy. I mean, I don't know how she was able to figure this on her site. She built her own website and this was 10 years ago. Today, you can build a website on chat GPT in one hour. Right. So you leave EY to then go to a staffing firm called Vaco. You open the San office and went from zero to$18 million in a period of two or three years. And ultimately, weren't satisfied with that, even though you had made good money.

39:41Randall Kaplan:How much money had you made at that point? How much money were you making? And what's your advice to everyone out there today who feels they have golden handcuffs and say, gosh, I'm making this much money? Does it depend on where you are in your career, family? What other factors? I left Ernst & Young and I wanted to work as a consultant in accounting because I could make$45 an hour. I was making$45 ,000 a year. I could make$90 ,000 a year as a consultant because of Sarbanes-Oxley at the time, right? So I met with this firm, Robert Half, and the folks that I met there, they were going to be the people that helped me get consulting work.

40:18They were like brokers that had relationships with companies and then they would recruit people like me and I would go out and do consulting work and I would make some money and then they would make some money and they would build a company, right? When I met them, they were like, you have a personality for this. You understand our space. This is a booming industry. Why don't you come in and work with us doing sales? And this is the first time I was like sales, like frightening by sales. The idea of picking up the phone and making cold calls was like definitely not how I was wired. But again, I was like, well, they kind of told me, hey, you can make like over$100 ,000 a year doing this and have like a pretty flexible schedule.

40:53And here I was thinking, well, flexibility, more money. I can put more money into Sammy Joe. And at this time, I'm thinking about my next clothing project. It was always about how much time and how much money so that I can go build a clothing company out of the garage. That was my criteria. I met them. I went to work for them. And not shortly after I started, we were all working together. We had really good harmony between the three of us. And we decided, let's leave and start our own company doing this. And so we ended up finding Vaco. They had a few offices in the Southeast, but we went to them and said, we would like to open an office here in San Diego.

41:28And we worked out the economics. We leveraged their brand and their marketing collateral, but we essentially had to build the business from scratch. That's what we did. We built an awesome company and we had a ton of fun. And we were in a space, like the recruiting and consulting industry was a bit like a commodity at the time. There was a lot of firms doing this. There's a lot of need for Sarbanes-Oxley consultants, but we did other things too. We helped companies with SEC reporting and systems implementations and all kinds of stuff, but it was really competitive. And what we did, what we learned from the folks in the Southeast that had started Vaco out of Tennessee was we learned what building a true community was in business.

42:11They had so much fun with their clients. Like they, they built an environment where the CFO from this company would go to an event and they would connect and see the CFO and this old CEO. And they just, they created environments for people to come together and share in meaningful experiences. And so we brought that ethos to San Diego and we came into a competitive market and we built the leader in our category. We built an awesome company. We had a couple hundred employees And this is the first time in my life where I was, you know, making pretty good money.

42:44Randall Kaplan:What does that mean? How much? You know, I was probably making like on a good year,$500 ,000 a year as a kid who was, what was I? 26, you know, something like that back then. So yeah, I'm doing great. And I've got an equity in the company that's building as well. You know, I was taking vacations. I was playing golf with clients. I was building this. It was intoxicating building this company. We had a few hundred employees, I think at our height. We were the third fastest growing private company in San Diego. It was an amazing journey. But again, I just had this part. There was this thing inside me that was like, I think you're a creative, actually.

43:23You understand the business and that's been really valuable. But I think there's a creative in there. And if you don't express yourself creatively, I'm not sure you're ever going to be fully fulfilled in your career. And so it was incredibly empowering because for the first time I had made some money, I had bought a house and I realized as soon as I didn't have to think about money anymore, I was like, oh, this actually isn't all that it's cracked up to be. You know, like this for me, for me personally, it was like the values of my family and like everything just flooded back and was like, this isn't ultimately what your life is supposed to be about.

44:03And it's not about showing up every day for a paycheck. It's about, you know, what is your contribution to the world? Like, what is it that you're really here to do? And so I went through a really tough chapter of my life where I was asking myself some really hard questions. I was kind of down and out. I had gone through a divorce. The woman that I started that first clothing company with, her and I got married. We ended up getting a divorce. I just was like feeling a little flat in my life. I felt like I wasn't attracting the right partner, but really it wasn't about the partner. was really about me and how I was feeling inside.

44:39And so that was during the time that I asked myself a lot of tough questions. I started practicing yoga. I developed a mindfulness practice and started meditating. I was reading. I was in a period of self-discovery and that led me into this whole new chapter of my life.

44:53Randall Kaplan:All right, so let's go a step back. I think I have a creative sense as well. So in college, I'd walk into the University of Michigan, go blue, these stores, and I heard you just signed Colson Loveland as one of your ambassadors. Amazing. huge fan. And I walk into the bookstore and I say, you know, I don't know, I can make something better. So I created Just Do It copies with Just Do It on it with better logos, tilted, rode to the final four. And I sold these door to door. Got kicked out of every dorm, one floor and the next floor. And I sold a lot of t-shirts making money that way. You started a t-shirt company called Viore.

45:31Randall Kaplan:We'll call it V1 Viore with a designer named Chad. Yeah. Talk to us about that experience and how you got into your first store. Do you remember what your first t-shirt was? Oh, man. Well, I have some of them here on the wall. So these are all reminders of like where we've been as a brand and, you know, where like this journey began for me. But yeah, Chad was a really talented artist. And, you know, again, I was like, I can take this money that I'm making and I'll fund the business. We'll take your designs and, your creative eye and let's build premium graphic t-shirts. And this is at the time when brands like Ed Hardy and Affliction were really popular, early 2005 timeframe.

46:17And people were selling t-shirts for$70 in these high-end boutiques. Crazy. Yeah, crazy.

46:24Randall Kaplan:Special cotton. Yeah, special cotton, unique art, big graphics were really popular. And so we decided to launch a business that would be a platform for humanitarians and environmentalists and people doing really cool work in the world. So every shirt that we made was a collaboration with a different humanitarian or environmentalist or musician that had a cool, compelling message that we wanted to platform. And so, yeah, we jumped in and I took all those lessons that I had learned from Sammy Joe and said, I'm not going to make 15 panel chiffon dresses, but I'm going to do really simple men's t-shirts and hoodies and sweatshirts.

47:04And yeah, so we did the same thing. We managed all the production ourselves. We made it all in Los Angeles and San Diego. I think the first meaningful store that we got into was Lisa Klein in West Hollywood. And Lisa Klein, there was a, there was a, there was kits in, there was Lisa Klein and there were Fred Siegel. And these were like the boutiques. These, they were, they were like the cool boutiques. And if you got into them, it meant something. And then perhaps a Nordstrom would pay attention and eventually you get picked up by a bigger account. It was an incredible chapter, but we fell on very difficult times with the financial crisis.

47:40And my business at Vaco was going through a tough time during that financial crisis. And my partner ultimately decided that he wanted to travel and he left the company. And so I was sitting there with a lot of t-shirts and a lot of money, pretty much my life savings at the time put into this business. And really all that was there of any value was potentially like the name Viore. And so ultimately we decided to part ways and close the business. I would continue on just selling t-shirts to friends and, you know, kind of out of the back of the car style, but it was the second, you know, quote unquote failure in the clothing business.

48:19And that one really left me heartbroken because it was at a time where I was going through a lot personally. I really wanted it to work. It was a beautiful intention for a business. And that was the one where I really started asking myself, like, maybe this is just a dream and it's not supposed to be my reality.

48:38Randall Kaplan:I like to take what happened next step by step. We'll talk about going to a party and that being life-changing in a minute. but you've mentioned before and you've talked about this in different podcasts that you went through. You broke up in a toxic relationship. You've touched upon that a little bit, but you were partying and drinking way too much. Can you go into the details there? How bad was it? Did you go to AA and have a real problem? And did you ever show up to work one day, just totally drunk or hung over? No, there was none of that. I've always been very functional. I would just say that, But it's just that same spirit.

49:13We graduate from these universities. And a lot of times that you're just learning how to party and get through class. And then it was kind of a continuation of that where I just was like going out all the time, drinking on the weekends, takes you a couple days during the week to feel better again. And then before you know it, it's Friday again. And you're going out and partying. I mean, this is pretty typical. A lot of young people live this lifestyle. So it's not that I was doing anything ultimately super destructive. It was more just like inside, I didn't feel good. I didn't feel like I was on a path to building something or creating something or attracting the right partner.

49:53There was always this, I don't know, it's like a depth. And I think this goes back to the way that we're raised. I was raised with a very spiritual mother. Everything had meaning. Everything had depth. I felt like I was living a little bit of a superficial existence. you know and it's nothing I wasn't doing anything ultimately wrong or destructive or I wasn't developing a drug habit or everything was under control but I just felt in the subtle that like the way I was living my life wasn't aligned with the path that I was supposed to be on and it was

50:26Randall Kaplan:eating at my soul we all have life-changing moments you went to a party that changed your life forever can you tell us about the person you met and what happened that night yeah so again it It was like the 4th of July. I'm at a party in Laguna Beach. You know, I'm with my best friends. We're having a great time partying. And this woman, her name's Lynette. And she - You've never mentioned her name before ever in any show. Yeah. So her name's Lynette. Her name's Lynette. She came up to me and she just said, hey, can I tell you, can I talk to you for a second? I said, sure. You know? And she said, you know, I just see something very clearly and I just need to tell you.

51:03This is before I knew she was an intuitive or, you know, I didn't even really believe in that kind of stuff. But she said, you were raised by a very special mother. And she ingrained these really deep values in you. And your upbringing was very unique. But you've gotten away from your values. And you're doing something in your career that you want deeply to be your full-time job. It's a project or a side hustle. it's something and she's like and I just want you to know that like this thing that you're working on is going to be huge and she goes I don't know why I just am seeing this for you but like it's going to be she's like you're going to be speaking in front of thousands of people telling the story of this thing that you built and I was like I'm thinking in my head like Viore you know because this is like I'm still at this point in my career trying to make Viore work she said but here's the thing.

52:03She goes, it's not with your current partner. She's like, there's going to be a completely change in the way that this is organized. And she goes, and the only way that this is going to happen is she's like, you need to get connected back with your values and the way that you were raised. At this point, like I'm bawling. You know, I'm at this party. My friends are looking at, they're like, why, what is going on? Like, who is this woman talking to Joan? Why crying. It was like she just spoke truth to me that I knew and I was feeling deeply, but I didn't fully connect the dots. And so she goes on to tell me that she is an intuitive, that she works with executives and people to help guide them, whether it's a big decision or it's their career, whatever it is.

52:50And she was like, I don't want you as a client, but I just, I feel like for whatever reason, I've been sent here and I'm in service to helping you. And I just was like so incredibly moved by this experience. And the next day I got out of a toxic relationship and I went to my first yoga class and I said, I'm not gonna drink for a while. And I just said, like, I don't know what the future holds for me, but I am gonna focus on clarity. Clarity being the ultimate currency at that point in my life. I just wanted to get clear. And I knew I couldn't do it if I was going out on the weekends and partying and staying in this vicious cycle.

53:33I was like, I'm going to break the cycle. So I started going to yoga. I started reading books. I stayed in on the weekends. I didn't have a girlfriend. I didn't date anybody for a year. I just was like, I just want to get clear. And it was that period of my life that everything started to fall into picture. Like I started to see a path for me. And I saw a path for Viore to bring it back as a different company. And so, yeah, it was incredibly transformational. I mean, I don't know what I would be doing if it wasn't for that meeting on that night.

54:10Randall Kaplan:You stole a question that was coming at the end, but we'll come back to it at the end. So you can think about the answer to that question. Well, we'll go back to, you're working on Viore. You want to make it work. We'll go back to 2012, 2013. Tell us about Chris Miller. And was there a moment where you said yourself, where you guys had the aha moment, that's it? Yeah. So Chris was, he became a good friend through yoga. So I started practicing yoga. Tell people who Chris Miller was. Yeah. So Chris Miller is one of the best pool skaters of all time. He's still like, if you talk to people that know the history of skateboarding, And Chris Miller's name will come up as, you know, up there with Tony Hawk as kind of one of the best to ever do it.

54:52While he was a pro skater, he started a footwear brand. Well, he started a company called Planet Earth, which did clothing. And it was a small company. But then he ended up starting, he got, I think Planet Earth was acquired by K2 Sports. With K2, he started Audio Footwear, which became one of the most popular skateboarding shoes. They sponsored Tony Hawk and a bunch of people. And so Chris kind of, while he was a pro, was also building brands in the sport of skateboarding and surf skate culture. But Chris got into yoga because he was dealing with a lot of injuries as well. Through a mutual friend of ours, this woman, Lauren Duke, who was a great yoga teacher, I would go to her classes.

55:33Chris would go to her classes. After about a year of practicing yoga, I started thinking about this idea for a brand. And we can talk about all the reasons why, But these thoughts are percolating and I'm starting to have conversations with people like Lauren and my friends about this idea. And she said, you need to meet Chris because Chris is actually having similar ideas. And so Chris and I met and we became instant friends. We just started surfing together. We were a part of this really cool community of people that were, you know, also building brands or they were yoga teachers or health and wellness experts or creatives and artists.

56:10and it was this awesome time in our hometown here in Encinitas. It was just a thriving time of people that were building things and we were all in that phase of life of creation and we all became friends with one another and Chris and I would talk. We would just sit around and talk about our life in Encinitas and this aspirational place that we get to call home and how people are in and out of the water and into yoga studios and prioritizing health and wellness and mindfulness And the culture of the town was oriented around this like growth mindset. And we felt to ourselves like this, this little area, this place, it's such rich inspiration for a brand.

56:50And we talked about the fact that there wasn't a brand authentically speaking to men in this, like as fitness and wellness was becoming more of a lifestyle, not just something you did. There wasn't a brand that really spoke to this, this, this, this culture. And so ultimately, Chris and I decided at that point, let's pursue this. And we decided at that time we were going to do it together.

57:14Randall Kaplan:So as an entrepreneur, there's a saying that you want to fill a need with a need. There were 30 million people practicing yoga at the time, and 30 % of those were men. Yeah. Did you do your market research at the time before you actually went ahead? Because so many people today just say, hey, man, I'm just going to wing this, and I'm just going to start it, and whatever happens, happens. Yeah, absolutely. We did research and, you know, Chris, because he was from the action sports industry would always quote that, you know, there were 4 million people that surfed in the United States. And I just thought that was insane because you're like, well, there's 4 million people that surf, but I was thinking about the brands that we all wore, Quicksilver and Billabong and O 'Neill and Ruka and Volcom.

57:56I mean, the list goes on. There were so many of them, but there were only 4 million people that surfed. And inherently, just like in yoga participation, there were 30 million people and men's was 30 % of them were men. And it was the fastest growing demo in participation. So men were growing faster in participation than women were, but there were no brands for men. And it wasn't just about yoga. We knew that Viore would always be a little bit broader than a yoga brand. But just jumping off, we felt like there were a lot of opportunity to build products that would support men that were interested in doing yoga.

58:29That didn't necessarily identify you as like a hippie or a monk or somebody that like, you know, maybe like the association with yoga was that it was this like spiritual practice in the Far East, you know. And we were like, no, there's normal guys, doctors, CPAs, executives that are doing yoga, and they don't have a brand that resonates with their lifestyle. And so we felt like that was a great jumping off point to start.

59:12you