Nate Checketts - $100M+ CEO, Why More Effort Isn’t Always Better

24:39And so that's, you know, like for our kids learning Spanish, we set a goal to all learn Spanish over the course of the year and they had to do Duolingo every day. And we were like friend quest and, you know, challenging each other. And yeah, that was so awesome. I mean, but all of this has come from these annual family goal setting meetings that my wife and I have. And it's the best fate. We look forward to that more than anything else. I love this because just last night, my parents were arguing with me that I'm not going to be able to, I want to run my family like I do a business and be very structured.

25:13Like, and they said, I can't do it. Oh, you're going to have two little girls and they're going to do whatever they want. I'm like, well, there's going to be discipline and structure with them as well, no matter what it is. Yeah. I mean, look, life's unpredictable. You never know what will happen with your kids or with anything else. But I do think you can bring your best level of thinking to the most important thing in your life. And I think intention in any arena of your life is going to help. Love it. The one big thing that I just want to jump into before we move on here is in September, you're doing, I know in August you're doing learn Someone like you I know without knowing you're a learning machine How are you getting smarter?

25:52You know, I I find that the best way to learn anything is to find an expert in that field And to start there and to ask really good questions and i i'm a big believer in coaches I love to set these like random challenges for myself to, you know Get better at singing or to get better and you know So i'm not at all above hiring great coaches in any arena and I like surrounding myself with people who are smarter than me, which is a low bar. So I can find really talented, smart people and sometimes they want payment and sometimes they're like, oh, I'm just happy to do this. But yeah, that's usually where I start when I'm trying to learn something is to just ask, be really curious, ask lots of questions.

26:32And that's just Googling, going on LinkedIn, finding best in class and just reaching out to them and saying, hey, I want to get better at this. It's funny. I mean, I thought maybe that would change is like business was more successful, but I love a good cold reach out to like a, you know, somebody I'm eager to meet. And it could be the most random person to like, you know, to everybody else. But I'm like, do you know that this individual is like super specialized in this one thing and I cannot wait to talk to them? So your husband, your father, obviously you have kids. I can tell you're in good shape.

27:03You're working on your mental, the business is in a good position right now. What type of like systems and tools are you using outside of what we spoke about? Yeah. The main tool that I really love, and I have to give him a plug, is a product called the Productivity Journal. It's by a group called Intelligent Change, which was founded by a good friend of mine, Alex Icon. You should have him on the podcast. He's an awesome, awesome guy. What's his name? Alex Icon. He's famous for the Five Minute Journal, which Tim Ferriss kind of made popular and made popular in the US. But Alex is one of those guys who I've spent a ton of time with him and he just lives exactly what he talks about.

27:45I mean, he is just authentic to the core. But the productivity journal is like the five minute journal on steroids. It's somebody like somebody like you and me. I love going deep. So it starts with, you know, what are the he calls them rocks? What are the rocks that you're trying to accomplish in a quarter? They're three month long journals. Every day has its own, you know, two pages. is what are the things I'm trying to accomplish this day? You write those down, Pomodoro method, you know, like how many 20 minute increments is it gonna take for you to get these things done? But actually, to be honest with you, like that I still use, I have tried every level of complexity.

28:25I mean, I made this crazy Google spreadsheet for tracking all of my habits and behaviors at one point. and everything that I had been working on. But I find that the simplest tools now are like I use the Productivity Journal and then I use the Notes app on my phone. And those are the two things that I'm like heavily relying on. Big Notes app guy. And ironically, the rocks, that's actually one of the core things in EOS. So that's funny. So you're saying you do that every single morning you're doing that? Yeah, it's a check-in in the morning and in the evening. But the big function that drives the whole journal is the weekly planning, which is, you know, it's basically 20 to 30 minutes of setting your intention, going back to your rocks, making sure that you're spending an appropriate time with them.

29:13There's a great, I've actually done this with my kids because I believe in this so wholeheartedly. You've got to put first things first, which is a Stephen Covey principle, right? And so if you take like a big jar and you give them tennis balls and ping pong balls and marbles, and you say, all right, I want you to put all the marbles in this jar, then put all the ping pong balls, then put the tennis balls. What happens? You can't fit any of the tennis balls in there because there's not space. All right, now start with the tennis balls, add the ping pong balls, then add the marbles. And what you find is it all fits because that's how life is.

29:51Put the first things first and then you know you could do it with rocks and then you know the last thing is sand you can do it with anything but the main point is when you prioritize what matters most then you tend to find a way to make room for everything else but if you start chasing the things that don't matter and those become the where you're spending your time you don't have time for the things that matter most you can't fit it in so i think it's a power powerful visual So people want to know someone like you, like what does a day look like or what does a week look like? And obviously I would imagine that you're doing a lot of things, you're traveling, family, but what are kind of those core tenants outside of the five minute journal?

30:33Is it like a morning routine, a night routine? Yeah, I mean, I've been on a number of podcasts where this question gets asked and I feel like it's a little bit of a dangerous proposition to answer just because I think everybody's world is so different. You know, I've done the 5 a.m. club thing for a long time. But what I really genuinely believe is there are key habits that you need to identify that unlock the other habits. And for me, it took me a long time to figure this out. And it's so simple that going to bed early is the key habit that unlocks everything. I agree with you. Like I used to think it was the key habit is you got to wake up early.

31:11But that didn't mean anything about when you went to bed. So I was like driving myself crazy getting three, four, five hours of sleep. trying to function. And then inevitably, like you break down, you can't do it all. And I'm like, this isn't, this isn't healthy. This isn't good. So now I, my wife and I, we are in bed, no joke, 9.15, like pretty consistently. I'm in that arena as well. Yeah. And, and I don't know, maybe like, because we celebrate the burning candles on both ends, like I maybe was embarrassed about that, but it is the, it's, but we're up, you know, at 5, 5.15 most days, my son has an early morning Bible study class that he goes to at 6.20.

31:53So we've got to be up, you know, lunches are made for the kids. We alternate days on which ones we take. I'm a big believer in getting my workout in. It's like, that is my happy place. I love doing it. Sometimes I'll do it with friends. Sometimes I do it solo and then daily planning. Those three things like matter a lot to me. And it's a big driver of who I am. I also love to start and end every day with prayer. It's like, you know, not everybody's spiritual, but for me, it's like a good centering, humbling, you know, I'm not the most important thing in the universe. So those are, those are all habits that I really believe in.

32:29I had done the 5 a.m. club before. Now I'm more of like a 5.30-ish, 5.45 guy. If you don't have your significant other on the same page with that, it becomes very, very weird socially because it was a huge shock to her when I was going to sleep at 9.30. She's like, you're an old man. What are you're doing. Like you need to get on the same page or it's not, it's not possible. And then you end up sleeping four hours, five hours, and then you're just screwing yourselves on both sides. It's funny because one of the pieces of advice somebody gave to us when we got married is like, you know, go to bed together.

32:57But my wife is naturally someone who goes to bed early. I am not. I have like serious ADD. We'd get in bed at the same time, but I'd go to bed like two and a half hours after her. And I'd find something to like, keep me up. But over time she's, she's won the day because the truth is, is like, you do need to be on the same page, but I would always wake up before her and now she's like pushing me. So yeah, I mean, I think you've got to, you've got to have a schedule that works. And I do think generally you should be striving to be in bed for eight plus hours a night. I think that's a really good, healthy habit.

33:29A lot of that's genetic. For me, it's eight hours and 25 minutes, but some people just need, some people are just crazy and they could operate on way less sleep. To tie that up, you mentioned atomic habits. Obviously there's all of these buckets, nutrition and fitness and such. What's like a one or two atomic habits that you do? Like for me, I don't wear the aura ring all day and I have it right next to my bed. You put it on just before bed. Yeah. That's what it's great at is bedtime. I think atomic habits should be like required reading for everybody in this country. James Clear Atomic House.

34:01Everybody read it. Great Instagram follow. It's amazing. He's brilliant. But what he does is he demystifies the fact that like the answer is goal setting and like just setting some big, enormous goal. And that's the answer. The answer is really the daily practices that lead to the goal that you're trying to achieve. And that's why I love it so much. But I think this year, one of the things I struggle with, and this is like my ADD, is like, if you were to go in my car, it's a little bit messy. You go by my bedside, it's a little bit messy. You go to my office, it's a little bit messy. and I decided this year, I'm like, I need to break this.

34:36Like, and it's solvable, it's all within reach. So I started by being like, I'm never gonna have a messy desk. And I was like, nope, that's the wrong approach. What I'm going to do is I'm going to set 10 minutes a day, just spend on organizing, right? Because this goes back to this idea of like consistency, intensity, technique. So I don't need, like, I don't need to go full GTD on everything to be organized, getting things done. I just need to like give myself the time and make the habit of prioritizing, keeping things organized. And so I'm, I'm like a month into that journey and I am shocked how much of a difference it makes.

35:15It's 10 minutes, but like my bedside is cleaner. My wife is like, what is going on with you? I'm like, I'm just trying this thing and it's working. And so, you know, my hope is that like, and I'm already seeing it starting to impact some of these other things. So yeah, I think you can apply this atomic habits framework to just about anything you want to improve in your life. Yeah. All about the inputs and that basically solves the outputs. All right. Let's get into the business side. We really focus on the mental side. So let's start with products. I think it's very rare for an apparel brand to basically have your moat is the product, I think in some sense.

35:54This gold fusion technology that you have. Tell us about it. What is Goldfusion and how'd you come up with it? Yeah, Goldfusion is a really unique technology that's an anti-odor treatment and antibacterial treatment on our product. And we found it with this group that had created for agricultural crop disease. So the problem with agriculture is there are unique diseases that evolve over time, almost like COVID, right, but specific to crops, and they can evolve and they can literally cripple a farm. They needed to find a way to create something that was antibacterial to fight off this, you know, crop disease that was also non-toxic and eco-friendly because obviously they don't want to poison the food sources.

36:42In clothing, what is typically used is these topical-based sprays that are effectively pesticides. And that's because that's what we use to kill bacteria. But the issue is, is these clothes are touching the largest organ on your body, which is your skin. And over time, these topical sprays wash out of the product. So their adhesion or the adherence rate goes down over time. Where do you think it goes? It goes into your laundry, which goes into your water or it goes into your skin. So not good, right? And I remember the first time someone was explaining this to me and I was like, holy cow. And the industry standard for this is after 20 washes, it just needs to be 50 % effective still.

37:28So after you've washed a workout shirt 20 times, it's going to start, you know, polyester basically will grab onto the dead skin cells and absorb that odor. So if you have anything that is an old workout clothes from an inferior place, go grab it, smell it. If you get that musky like scent, first of all, it's your own dead skin that's flaking off into it and it's adhering to it. But second of all, you've got a really cheap piece of workout product and these topical sprays, they're not good for the environment. They're not good for your skin. They're not good. And they don't even work well. So I got introduced to this group.

38:05It was a, it was a PhD chemist. Who introduced you? Let's give them a shout out because that was, that was a big introduction. you know, ever did that. It was one of our investors. He's like, I'm also invested in this one company. He's like, they're starting to play around with textiles. Like, I feel like you guys should talk. So I went and met them and it was like this full on laboratory. So a PhD chemist and a PhD physicist. And so they were like, yeah, we've been playing around this for like towels and laundry and sheets. He's like, and we thought maybe it could be used for workout clothing.

38:34And I was like, well, we got to prove this out. You know, there's FDA clearance and all these other things. So we started testing with it and at a hundred washes, it was still 98 % effective against odor. And so the adherence rate was substantially stronger and it's non-toxic and eco-friendly. The solution that is used to create it, you can drink. Like you can absolutely drink it. I think the non-toxic eco-friendly thing is that discussion is really starting to pick up. It is so crazy, man. Like you wear some of these big name brands, I don't want to call them out. It's literally bad for your health.

39:09I think we're like still so early innings on where this is going to go. People have been talking about sustainability for the last 10, 12 years, and there's a lot that's happening there, but it's enormously complex. For example, people have started to use more BPA recycled water bottles. And what's happening is the content in those plastic water bottles that are being recycled are showing, you know, kind of higher levels of this PFAS, which is, you know, these forever chemicals that people are like, these microplastics that people are trying to avoid. So it's like, well, you can choose the sustainability path, which could also have a potential negative impact on your health.

39:50And so that's why you're starting to see introduction of more things like organic cotton, merino wool. We strive to be more sustainable. We don't talk a lot about it because I feel like there's so much greenwashing out there. And so we don't call it sustainability. We call it responsibility. We think about making the responsible choice for the environment, the responsible choice for our customers and the responsible choice for our supply chain. Sometimes you're making trade-offs, but usually we try and maximize across there. And I think this is, as people get better at testing and states like California start to increase standards, you're gonna see companies have to make big shifts in this space.

40:29I'm in your funnel. I'm getting a lot of ads. I feel like that value prop needs to be a little louder. You're saying 20 washes versus a hundred washes. Yeah. That's everything for me from a blank t-shirt perspective. Like I just bought this. I'm very excited to see how it washes. Like I'm just, you know, for a white t-shirt for me, I'm done. Usually 10, 15 times. Yeah. Yeah. So this technology or this, this, what do you want? How is it actually embedded into the product? So it happens at the fabric level. So it gets infused into the garment at the fabric level, and then that fabric will get cut and sent to the cut and sew or the manufacturer.

41:11So you can now infuse this in your whole entire product line if you wanted to. Yeah, we can. Amazing. I was very surprised when I went to the store and I went online. You guys have a ton of different products, a really, really wide range. I'd love to know for people that are starting off, you know, they start with a t-shirt and hoodie. What has been the biggest challenge as far as like extending that product range? Yeah. I mean, I think our breadth is both our biggest strength and our biggest challenge. We started as a purely active brand, you know, only making workout clothes. That's where we saw the opportunity.

41:45That's what I was excited about. That's what I care about. But eventually we ended up building this pan, which was like a hybrid pan called the CommuterPant and it sold out in two weeks. So after we launched it, we were like, oh, wow. You know, our customer is giving us permission to do more in this space. So then we launched the CommuterShare a few years later and those two products have been a huge part of our business. And so it's funny to hear you kind of introduce this as like a work leisure brand because I've never thought of us that way. I think about us as like a performance apparel brand.

42:19And the goal is to, you know, embed performance into every product that we make. We've done outerwear. We've done, you know, we came out with a beautiful woven overcoat that has, you know, real stretch to it. So we just think about performance being the foundation that we live on. And the customer has given us a lot of flexibility there because we see guys who buy workout shorts from us and then they buy dress shirts from us. and that makes them enormously valuable customers, but it makes it a challenge to understand where do you stop that? Like we could, in theory, make anything. We have very high quality standards, but it becomes complex in how you tell that story online, how you tell that story to the customer, how you tell that story in the stores.

43:06So I think we're still on that journey. How do you decide what product medium? Are you guys doing any type of surveys or just going off intuition? Are you starting with a small test? If it does well, then you go into production. We do a ton of focus groups. Like that is a huge part of what we do. We do a lot of wear testing. And so I'm always challenging the team fewer better because the first company I started, you and I were talking about this before we started here, it was a mobile software company. And when I started that company, somebody gave me this book called The Inmates Are Running the Asylum.

43:40And the premise of the book was that engineers who are so smart and so capable were bleeding into product design. And he gave the example of the VCR. You only needed a VCR to press play, stop, pause, rewind, fast forward. But an engineer came in and was like, here's all the things the VCR could do. You could pre-program it to schedule and record your favorite show. But 98 % of the users didn't need that. So now you see a VCR, it's loaded with all these buttons, it's loaded with all this complexity, and the average user is like, where's the play button? Where's the fast forward? And so this is what Apple did so well is they simplified what does the 98 % of the customer need to do?

44:24And we'll allow the machine to be super capable, but we're gonna focus in on making it painfully simple to use. And the challenge that we have with design or designers is if you give someone an empty room and a paintbrush and they're an artist, they're gonna fill the room. So you have to add in appropriate constraints to drive the best innovation. You have to say, hey, actually, this is the only wall you can paint on. Do your best work. They have the same amount of time, but now you've given them a constraint and therefore you're gonna see a better option. So for us, we start with development counts, adoption rates, CC targets, style targets.

45:03And that means that with our team, we can only develop a certain number of styles in a season. We have to adopt a certain number of them. And we can only have CCs is just like a color of a style, either a new or an existing style. And that forces a level of constraint to drive better innovation in the product. I love the analogy of a kite. You know, when you think about a kite flying high in the air, you could see how a kid would say, well, let's let go of the string or let's cut the string because then it can just go higher and higher. But in reality, the constraint is what is allowing it to fly.

45:41So I tell our team, I can't cut this constraint. You might feel more free and more flexible, but eventually it will lead to the end. So there's an element of discipline in how we merchandise and how we develop. And it comes back to resource constraints and, you know, doing fewer, better things to make sure that every time we release a product, You as the customer know, we did homework, we did wear tests, we did, you know, we didn't just like come up with this and be like, yeah, of course we can make it. We really made sure that it was going to be best in class. And by doing all that, especially in the focus group, you'd think it's objective, but have you guys ever done stuff where it all roads said that, hey, this is going to go well and then it didn't go well?

46:23Has that ever happened? Oh yeah, for sure that's happened. I mean, there's, there've been times where we've had products where we're like, this is a total home run. You know, it's really great. the focus group, the wear test, all check the boxes. And it's like, eh, it didn't sell very well. What would you say is the biggest mistake that you've made when you're trying to launch a new product? I think, man, the biggest mistake. Buying too much inventory? Yeah, buying too much inventory is something that didn't end up being great. I mean, I think the biggest mistake we've made is trying to do too many things in the same category versus like just giving the customer a really clear guideline of what to make.

47:01So when we made the commuter shirt, which has been in the top five sellers of our company since we launched it, our product development team came back with three shirts. And they were like, we want to do all of these. Three different iterations of the commuter shirt? No, no. Three different fabrications. And they were like, we should make all of these. They're all great. And I remember thinking, okay, but how are we going to convince the customer to buy one of these? because they're just going to be like, well, these are the same three shirts that I see in every store. But this one shirt, which became the commuter shirt, was so lightweight, so differentiated, so comfortable.

47:37I don't know if you saw it in the store today. I mean, I've run a marathon in this thing. It is unbelievable. It is definitively better than every shirt on the market. Super light. It felt more athletic to me than like I was deciding what I was going to wear for the podcast and I went with this shirt. Yeah. It honestly looks, and it's made out of an Italian fabric, It looks like a beautiful Italian woven dress shirt, but you could wear it to work out. And if you want to, we've had people deadlift 600 pounds and we've had people do all kinds of crazy things in the shirt. But I remember getting the shirt and just being like, why would we make these other ones when this one is so much better?

48:14And one of the best decisions we made is to say, we're just going to tell people this is the only dress shirt you ever need to buy. Which I've seen on your copy. Yeah. And so from the customer standpoint, it's super clear. And I think one of the mistakes that is easy to make, and we've made it a million times, is that when you launch a brand or a company, there's all this outside noise. Customers, investors, spouses, whatever, who'll be like, you guys need to do this. You need to make kids clothes now. You need to make, you know, this new product. And you're like, yeah, we could do that. And just because you can doesn't mean you should.

48:52and it makes it really confusing for the customer. So we've tried to get better. We've made so many mistakes in this arena, but I think one of the biggest lessons I've learned is be really clear about why you're making a product, why it's differentiated, and then tell that story as clearly as possible versus, you know, muddying it up with, you know, a million different stories. That's some good advice there. So you're eight or nine years in and then you launch Women's. Yep. How and why did you make that decision? You know, that was a really data-driven decision. I mean, that's another thing where people have been telling us from the beginning, we should do women's.

49:27Women's is a very different product development life cycle. We wanted to make sure if we did it, we did it really, really well. We had brought in this new chief product officer who's enormously talented. And I said to her, she's like, I really want to develop women's products. I was like, there's no way we're launching women's products until you can prove to me that it's better than other things that are in the market. And in the first nine months of launching it, we made the Today Show and Women's Health as the best legging in the market, which is pretty incredible when you think about the competition we're going up against.

49:59And she's just, she's a special talent in the market. We worked with the number one mill globally that works with, you know, other brands in the space, but like the high-end brands. And we gave them the mandate of what we were trying to accomplish. And we came out with this other women's product called Dream Glow, which has just crushed it and done really, really well. and we get rave reviews on. But, you know, strategically, it came from this idea that co-ed brands are absolutely have a bigger addressable market than single gender brands. Up until now as well, too, I would imagine that you had 10, 15, 20, even 30 % women maybe buying for men?

50:3630%. I mean, it was almost like on the nose, 30%. But, you know, if you look at Lulu's public earnings, they will tell you 70 % of their men's product is purchased by women. So other brands in the space that have started men's and have introduced women's, 70 % of their revenue is now women's. So part of our thesis for launching Roan was that all the premium brands end up skewing women's. And that's why there was so much white space in men's. But now the men's market has become cluttered and there's a ton of brands. There's consolidation happening in that space. But the women's market is incredibly big.

51:12And by the way, we felt like we were missing opportunities by not having it. And they wanted to try products like Gold Fusion and, you know, they wanted to try some of the fabrications that we were using. So it's been very successful for us. It 2X'd our initial forecast in the first nine months. So did you start small or you just went big immediately? No, we started tight. We had a pretty tight product range and we've, you know, we've kind of expanded from there. But, you know, it's hard. I was having this conversation with somebody earlier today, he's a retail consultant and we were talking about a brand.

51:48Again, I don't want to be pejorative, but he said these guys went from zero stores to 60 doors over like a year, retail doors that they were opening. And it was a huge mistake. You have enormous debt on the company now and they can't get out of it. And they're closing all these doors left and right. And there was another brand that was started by the founder of Lululemon. His son and his wife started this really cool technical cashmere brand. And because he had had all this success with Lulu, he's like, we just need to go open a bunch of retail stores. So they signed 75 leases and the brand had to declare bankruptcy in like 18 to 24 months.

52:25And the reason is because things take time. It takes time to build in the hearts and minds of customers. Actually, Jesse, there was somebody who said this to me really early on. He's like, it takes eight years to build a brand. He's like, even in this market, it takes eight years. And I just remember thinking that feels like an eternity. But I think there's a level, I mean, you know, you can obviously accelerate these things, particularly with the power of celebrity and others. But I think in order to really build a brand that has staying power, you got to believe that it's going to take that time.

52:55I want to talk about the challenges on the women's side. You're definitely going to get economies of scale with potentially raw fabrics. Maybe from like a human perspective, obviously you don't need another CFO. But something I'm always like weary of is, you know, our designer designed our women's collection. Yeah. Let's just say it didn't do that well. Yeah. So like, what were all of those hires that you had to make new? Like you had, like, do you have to get a new CMO? You have to get a new creative director? What did that look like? Yeah. We definitely had to double the size of the merchandising and the, um, and the product development and the design team.

53:30Those were non-negotiables because in actually women's is more difficult to design and develop and fit and get right than men's. So that part was a complete and total investment, but things like finance and, you know, HR and operations, um, you know, didn't even like needed very little investment because those things are just on scale. So, um, but we, you know, and a little bit of investment in marketing, we did bring in, um, an amazing CMO who just joined us a few months ago from, she was the head of marketing of the Americas of the North Face. And she's been fantastic. And, but yes, investment in the team, investment in the process, investment in the storytelling.

54:15We signed a deal with the LPGA, their first ever real apparel deal. And the LPGA is, I'm very long in women's golf. If you go back 10 years ago, 10 % of all youth participation was female. Now it's 40%. So you fast forward that trajectory 10 years in the future, the game of golf is going to become even more relevant because you're going to see more women playing. That's going to add demand to golf courses. It's going to add demand to golf apparel. Let's talk about that. Let's just go into partnerships now. I saw you sign with the NBA as well. So when you signed with the LPGA, why did you pick golf?

54:49Was that a data-driven decision or was that something? We had done a tremendous amount of homework on who the customer was. And for men's, they definitely play golf. That customer is interested in golf. Let's talk about that too. When you say you've done a lot of homework, what do you, is this more? Credit card data. We partnered with JP Morgan, who's our bank. They're able to provide us anonymized research into our customer and into our competitor's customer. So for example, our customer has high household income. They're very interested in health and wellness. They're interested in fitness and looking professional, but they also are interested in things like golf.

55:28So, you know, building a female counterpart to the male customer, we didn't initially know if golf was going to be a part of that. But as we looked at the landscape, we also thought it was a point of differentiation from an entry standpoint because women's golf was the second fastest growing sport over the last several years behind pickleball. So more women are picking up the sport. They feel like the existing styles are very tired, very like print driven. It's like, that's what my mom or my grandma would wear. And they want a level of performance in their golf apparel. in the same way that men have been asking for that over the last five to 10 years.

56:00So we felt like we could come in with a point of differentiation. And the LPGA was, they've been fantastic partners helping us tell that story, why the product's better, why it's unique, why it's needed in the market. So yeah, that's why we worked with them. The MBA was also quite organic in terms of how that came up. And, you know, they obviously have big active partnerships with other brands. But because we have this whole lifestyle component with our commuter line, we felt like that was an opportunity to partner, get a huge megaphone with them. And the commissioner, Adam Silver, is a huge fan of the product.

56:36And so he basically told his team to go get the deal done. Amazing. I want to go back into that credit card and getting the anonymous personas. Ultimately, you're figuring out as much as possible about your customer and then you're backing into, this is our core persona and then making sure who you're picking as an influencer, how you do your marketing, your messaging, your storytelling, all goes towards there. What's some small steps that a smaller, a couple million dollar brand can do to take those? Getting the credit card information, does that cost a lot of money? You know, with us, it was just by virtue of having that existing relationship.

57:12So we didn't have to pay anything for it, which was great. But there's definitely a lot of tools that you can use. I mean, one of my favorite podcasts is, and I'm going to botch this, is the Reid Hoffman Masters of Scale. Yeah, Masters of Scale, yep. He basically talks about doing things that don't necessarily scale early on in the journey. So for example, I would highly encourage owners of a brand or a company to reach out to their hundred top customers, ask them questions. Like just, you know, you can send out a survey link, but you could also just personally like type and like say like, Hey, I'm the founder or call them.

57:49We, we still do that sometimes. Like I'll get notices. Like, I remember some guy spent$26 ,000 on us last year. And I was like, I don't even understand how you could own that much clothing. And he wasn't using a discount code. And I was like, so I just reached out. I was like, hey, just want to say thank you for spending this much and really appreciate it. He's like, oh, you know, he's one of these unique people who have multiple homes and, you know, multiple markets. He loved the product so much. He gifted a ton of it to people, family and friends. And so you can learn a lot just by having these conversations and doing focus groups, which are relatively inexpensive to run.

58:23Focus groups you don't hear about as much. I feel like in brands doing one, two, five, 10,$30 million, I feel like the bigger you get, the more you do it. but I feel like that's something that a focus group costs a couple hundred dollars, right? Yeah. I mean, we bring them in, we offer them, you know, we intentionally strive for people who don't know the brand or maybe have some familiarity with the brand, but haven't worn it. You know, that way they can have like a really totally independent, fresh perspective. We will do it with existing customers too. But yeah, we give them a little bit of credit at the end of the night.

58:50And oftentimes they end up spending like way more than the credit that they're given. So it's a net net, you make money. Yeah. It's like, I mean, I don't even know. We provide like some food and refreshments, but what we learn from it is so invaluable. How big does that cohort, that sample size have to be for you guys to get conclusive evidence if you're going to do some sort of focus group? A couple hundred? Usually our focus groups are like 15 to 20 people, and then we do them in multiple markets and then we aggregate that data. So I, you know, what is meaningful? It's meaningful when you start to see real trends in that data.

59:26But, you know, I think people overweight the like, and, you know, the sample size needs to be, you know, a thousand to be meaningful. I think if you have 100 target demo customers telling you something and you're hearing something consistently, that's a really good indication that you need to be listening to that. What does success look like in these partnerships with the MBA and the LPGA? Do you guys look at that as top of the funnel, brand awareness? I know you're selling products with the MBA. Is that if you break even, it's a big win? How does your company look at it? Yeah, I mean, I think there's been a big shift in marketing for digitally native brands over the last couple of years.

1:00:02And that's because I think most people have woken up to the fact that we've been lulled to sleep by a false sense of security in these, you know, these paid metrics with Meta and Google. And that's because you have these hungry algorithms, which are all taking credit for the same, you know, the same sale. Cost of acquisition has gone up significantly in those channels. and so you're seeing more traditional forms of marketing that are a little squishier, a little hard to measure come back into style because there's all these positive externalities with things that are a bit more challenging to measure and there's quite a few negative externalities with the things that you can conclusively measure but it's hard to know whether or not those are really the things that are ultimately driving the sale.

1:00:46If I go to my neighbor and I'm like, hey, you should check out Roan and he goes to the Google and he types in run.com and he clicks the sponsored ad, Google gets the credit for it. And in reality, it was word of mouth that drove the sale, right? So, you know, just like any marketing funnel, you got top of funnel, which are, you know, some of these brand awareness plays, mid funnel, bottom funnel. I think a lot of digitally native companies have been caught. 85, 90 % of their spend is going into, is bottom funnel, mid funnel activities. And what happens in a funnel when nothing's coming in the top, it dries up.

1:01:20I think one of the big learnings for us is that, you know, we need to continue to drive brand awareness because our consumer metrics are crazy. Like the repeat rate, the loyalty rate, those are like so off the charts of traditional retail economics, but we need more of them and we need to find more people. And so it was a big investment in kind of top of funnel marketing and on a relative basis, actually surprisingly inexpensive to get the number of eyeballs that we're getting through these partnerships. So with CPMs, if you're not looking at like actual hard sales, it's just like general awareness and impressions is something that you can pseudo rationalize.

1:01:55There's things that you can look at in terms of like unaided brand awareness scores and yes, CPMs and how many people are, you know, kind of becoming aware of the brand as a result or eyeballs. But, you know, that's effectively the focus of these partnerships is to drive greater brand awareness so that there's brand recognition. Then somebody walks past the store on the street or, you know, they get a paid ad. You're going to drive better efficiency with those other channels because you've got more people in the funnel. It's so crazy how this is just common sense. Like, at everything you just said, the craziest thing is you talking about someone telling the neighbor about Roan.

1:02:32Like that is the number one. Totally. Best form of marketing is word of mouth. Yep. It is absolutely crazy that people, I, we started a company and we went absolutely crazy on influencer thousands and thousands and thousands. We'd give people art, you know, let's say 75 % of them would post. We're not tracking. We were just going, this was the beginning. We were just going so hard. The company was doing really, really well. We stopped doing it because we needed to track it. And we didn't look at it as kind of top of the funnel. And for everybody listening, you're going to start seeing a ton more influencers because ironically, from this podcast, I've woken up to the fact that like, it's common sense if my cost to acquire a customer is X amount of dollars and my cogs to give someone two pieces of art is half that.

1:03:19If two people post it, am I going to get a sale? And that's not even taking into account LTV. It's simple math that way. It's funny. we're just repeating the same human habits that have existed for thousands of years. Like you were going to people who have built an audience and we're saying to them, hey, we want to leverage your relationship with this audience in exchange for cash or product or, you know, depending on the person. And that math tends to work so much better than it does to go to Google and Meta and say, hey, we want to leverage your platform to run an ad. Because if you think about it, their core business runs on great content.

1:03:57And you know what's not generally great content? Ads. When you boost creator content or influencer content, it tends to be better. But I don't even think this is a generational thing. I think it's just a human thing. People have gotten better about knowing when to ignore stuff. But when you have a trusted relationship with an influencer, which so many influencers are so... Look, I used to be like, I don't get this. Like, I don't understand. It is hard. What they do is not easy. Like it might be easy to laugh at and be like, how do you make a living doing it? They have built a relationship in the same, not all that dissimilar to how preachers used to build relationships with congregations.

1:04:35They're talking to them consistently. They're building elements of trust. They're responding to comments and feedback. And that audience has value. And what brands are waking up to is we can, now instead of just going to like traditional outlets like media and TV and radio, we're going to go to these people who have built these independent relationships and we can leverage that. Yeah, I mean, I think content creators and influencers, if you own your distribution and it's sticky and you're authentic, I think you're in a good spot. Let's just talk about the overall marketing mix there. I think before we do, I want to put a button on.

1:05:12For everybody listening, let's make this a challenge after this episode for you to lower your percent of marketing that you spend on meta and Google. Why don't you take it down like 2%, 5%, 10%. That's something that, you know, we were at one point, it's embarrassing. We were probably 85 % meta. Most digitally native brands are. We were probably 85 % meta, 10 % Google, and then the true cost of goods for our seeding. And that was our whole entire marketing mix. I just think that the world has started to shift away from, you know, trust these huge platform. I'll give you another example of this.

1:05:46My sister, I got to give her a plug. She used to run our customer service. And four years ago, she came to me. She's like, I've had this dream of something I want to go build. And I was like, do it. Whatever you need. Like, I'm here for you. So she launched this kind of sports media platform called Sportsish. And in two and a half, three years, she's built 200 ,000 followers on Instagram. And you know how much money she spent on advertising? Zero dollars. Organic content. Amazing organic content targeted at women. And, you know, it's basically the marriage of E! News and ESPN. So it's the pop culture stuff happening around sports.

1:06:24Like who are the players on the field dating? What's happening heavily in women's sports? The puck is going there. That's great. Yeah. And she was so ahead of it. She has a podcast where she interviews the wives and girlfriends of, you know, athletes and the moms of athletes. And now with women's sports growing so much, a lot of amazing female athletes that she's able to get access to. And my point to our team is organic, great organic content and storytelling is always going to win because these platforms rely on that to get audience engagement. They rely on advertising to produce revenue, but they're always going to prioritize great organic content and storytelling over ads because they need that to breathe.

1:07:07That is their oxygen. Yeah. I mean, you look at the engagement of a flat product shot versus all the beautiful produced videos that you guys have been posting, the difference in engagement is wild. So let's talk about that marketing mix. Where are you guys at from a ballpark percentage wise? How do you guys look at that? You know, I think, I mean, we probably wouldn't share publicly what exactly the media mix is, but I would just say that we've seen a continued shift away from meta and Google into other forms of marketing so that it's, you know, it's better balanced and better mixed. And we, you know, we have started leaning into influencer.

1:07:42Influencer, by the way, has worked so much better on women's than it has ever worked on men's. I, you know, I would just say that generally female influencers are just really, really good at how they, you know, connect with their audience, authentically tell the story on why they like a product. And that's always been a challenge for us in men's, you know, in fashion. And I do feel like on the influencer side, you guys are doing a very good job of not doing these very kind of singular focus deals. You guys are integrating in content, integrating in storytelling. I saw that Ken Rideout piece that you guys are doing.

1:08:13Great content. For anybody listening, you guys should check out Roan's Instagram. Great content. Ken's the man. The other cool thing about this is I think we've gotten to a point where we're trying to have fun too. We want to build a really healthy business, but we want to do stuff that we're interested in and that we like to do and that stories we want people to hear. Looking back over the last 10 years, what do you think has been one of the most impactful marketing levers that you guys have pulled? If you look back almost a decade now. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. I mean, we've never had like this single inflection point when, you know, some big celebrities warn the product or I think, I think it's been a lot of, not dissimilar to what we talked about with atomic habits.

1:08:57It's been a lot of like small, good decisions that have stacked up to lead to better results. And I think the best decisions I've made have been investing in good people that know what they're doing and trusting them to do good work. Early on, one of the things that we've always prioritized is saying, what is the best thing for the customer? And I do feel in general that most brands are kind of so me focused that it's like, hey, I just want to tell you about me. And like, what I mean by that is like, here's this new product, here's this new color, here's this product feature, here's why you should, you know, here's why you should buy it.

1:09:31And the challenge with that is like, if you look at a brand relationship like you do a friendship, that's like the worst kind of friendship ever. It's like every time we get together, I just want to tell you what's going on in my life. And I never want to listen to you and I never want to do what's important for you. And so I think one of the best branding or marketing decisions we've made is to, you know, really try and put the customer first and the value of the customer first. And I love to tell this story when we, when COVID first happened in March, every brand on planet Earth was sending this same email, which is like, hey, here's what we're doing about COVID-19.

1:10:10We're closing our stores. We're taking care of our employees. We're, you know, and it's like, we're, and really all they were saying is like, we're good people. But the customer was worried about where they were going to get hand sanitizer and toilet paper. They didn't care that like some brand that they like is taking care of their retail employees. And maybe they did, but so we decided to send an email because all of a sudden our entire team was like, Nate, we need to send this email. And I was like, I don't think anybody's going to care if we send this email. I think they're going to be like, great, another one of these exact same boilerplate emails.

1:10:45So we instead sent an email, which is like, hey, you're at home. You might be home for an extended period of time. Here's 30 great shows to stream and where to stream them. And here's 30 great books you can read or listen to. and here's, you know, a few activities that you can do with your kids. And we just organically built this like really great email. I've never seen a response to an email like this one that we sent. And I think we may have included at the end, like here's five great Rome products that you can wear while you're, you know, at home. Just a little boilerplate. Yeah, but it was like, people were like, thank you for sending this because this is actually valuable for me.

1:11:22And I think we may have started the email. It was like, if you're really curious about what we're doing with our team or our products or our supply chain, here's a link. And it took you to a landing page and it said like the same boilerplate stuff that was in all these other emails. Like, but really we're thinking about you and what you're going through. And so I try and make sure that we're oriented that way in how we develop products and how we market the product, how we speak, you know, about the company. I love that. Maybe I just think it would have been a good GWP to give someone a hand sanitizer.

1:11:49You just, that was a good idea. That's true. That just popped in my head. All right. So all this marketing driving towards obviously the website and or into retail. So let's dive into retail. You guys got 16 stores. Do you have 16 right now or currently? 16, yeah. 16 retail stores in the US. I love how it's a community hub for these muscle and mind events, which I want to touch on as well too. But the thing that I found, which I saw on the internet, which was surprising to me is when you look at these stores, I would say there's three buckets. The biggest bucket, the most common bucket is people, it's a loss leader.

1:12:22People are losing money. Some people are breaking even and very few people are making money. You guys are making money in these stores. Yeah. I don't believe in having stores as just like a marketing engine. You know, I think in digitally native brands, people were using that as an excuse of like, let's see what the e-com left. And so the halo effect justifies having these stores in their existence. And I think retailers have figured out how to make money from retail for a long time. Why would you walk away from that model? And I think it's just lowering your standards on it. And by the way, it is hard.

1:12:56It's not, being good at e-com does not mean that you will have a good retail business. And I convinced myself for like three years while we were doing pop-ups that we could do it because, you know, we had smart people, we had the same product, but it is such a different business. So we had to go and find experts to build out our retail strategy. And we're still improving at it. Our stores are getting like from a comp basis, they're growing at an enormous rate because every year we're like, oh, let's learn that and roll that out over the fleet. And it's a lot easier to run 16 stores than it was ever to run one or two stores because you can hire smart people and you can spread those centralized costs over those stores and you can start to put in process.

1:13:43And so now we're in a place where it's like, man, if we can make this level of four wall contribution in our stores, how many stores are we going to open? It's like almost as many as we can, you know, in the right markets, in the right locations, which is a different challenge. But I think it's just, I think it's harder than people realize. And omni-channel brands, which is almost a requirement now, It means you have to be good at kind of everything, which is why I think so few new brands are succeeding because cost of acquisition have gone up. Investor money to invest in consumer companies isn't what it was 10 years ago where investors had convinced themselves that these were like mini tech companies, which were not.

1:14:24And so it's harder to build that level of scale. And you have the GDPR rules that have added in a level of ambiguity into the customer data, which you can't see as readily as you could before. So that's why I strongly believe brands that are like 8 to 15 years old are this new vintage of unique brands started by digital first thinkers and executives. And those are going to be the brands of the future. And they're going to be the ones that are taking the most market share. And obviously you own your customers while there too, and you completely own the experience. And we already have that level of data so that we can leverage that as we build out future stores, site selection, what markets we should be entering, categories we should be doing.

1:15:06You mentioned leveraging data there, and I've been so surprised because I'd like to think I've had really smart people on this podcast thus far. Everybody's had a different answer. Why do you go to a specific location? How are you choosing locations for your retail stores? There's several big factors. And, you know, it goes back to the comment that we were talking about before. Brands convince themselves because they've had some success, either revenue standpoint or customer standpoint, that if they open the store, people will come. You know, the field of dreams line, like, just build it, people will come.

1:15:37That's not how it works. You need to go into a market where you have an existing customer base so that you can build off of that customer base. And so we target e-com areas where we already show real strength. We also use some really great mobile data. There's a tool called Placer.ai that you can use. You can see how your customers are effectively moving and where they spend their time, even within centers where they'll kind of aggregate and there's heat maps there. Let's stop there for a second. Placer.ai can show heat maps on where people are moving within your stores? It's anonymized, not within the store, within a center.

1:16:13So like where traffic is going to be at its strongest and you can kind of see, you know, you can get this level of detail where you could go to the right street. You know, like let's pick - Oh, you're saying not in your specific store. You're saying like on like a - Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like take Fifth Avenue, for example. We know Fifth Avenue is a great retail store, but you could be on the wrong side of the wrong street and not have success. So it's not enough to know like, hey, I need to be in this zip code. You need to know where in the center you need to show up and, you know, where your customer is going to be.

1:16:47How grander can that get though? Like, let's just say you're going into a mall. Can it tell you general vicinity within a mall? Should you be on the north side or the south side? Generally, you need to be more reliant on localized data for that, which is, you know, much more qualitative and less quantitative to get answers to that question. But you can see within the mall where there are heat maps on the traffic and where people are spending more time based on cell phone data. So let's have the conversation with the guy that's not here. So I was under your thinking. It's like, okay, we have all these customers in Green Bay.

1:17:22Let's open up a store in Green Bay. We know that's the lowest risk. His thought is we want to go where we don't have the customer in a good location. He's more of a mall guy because the guy in Green Bay, we're going to win on LTV anyway. We have them already. We want to go find new customers. So that was his way of thinking, which I found interesting. I think if you are Patagonia or Lululemon, that's a model that will work really well for you. And, you know, he knows his customer might be different than my customer. But what I know for sure is that retail success is predicated on showing up where you have an existing customer base and you're trying to grow your customer base.

1:18:00And right now, unless you're driving billions of dollars of top line revenue, there are so many available customers to you in markets where you're densely saturated. Think about Starbucks. Starbucks opens stores literally across the street from each other. Why? Because they have so many available customers in those markets that they know they can, it's not necessarily, it's going to be slightly cannibalistic, but it's not going to be cannibalistic enough that it's going to. And we see this in the e-com data. Like, yes, we might, if we go open a store in a market, we might see some conversion from e-com into retail.

1:18:35But mainly what we see is those, the LTVs and the, you know, the, the repeat rates of those customers go way up because that means that they're going to, they're going to buy more frequently. They're going to walk past the store and they're going to be like, I need to try that. And then you're going to buy it online. That goes back to that common sense is also another touch point. Totally. It's a billboard there. What do you think is the biggest mistakes that you guys have made through zero to 15 plus stores? I think the biggest mistake is we were slow to move to women's. We should have gone to women's faster.

1:19:05I think it's a huge market, huge opportunity. And then I think some of the biggest mistakes have been my mistakes, like just investing in team and people and making good personnel decisions. Those have been hard lessons to know when to go out and hire an expert and when to just be like, oh, I'm gonna go with the person has been here from the beginning. And when you say not do women's earlier, are you just saying because that mitigates your risk and increases revenue in a per-store perspective because you can buy for both people in there? Yeah, I just think that it's a super competitive market and it takes time.

1:19:39It's like the eight-year thing. So I wish I would have started that clock sooner. We weren't prepared for it. We didn't have the team for it. We didn't have the resources to do it well. So I think it's all worked out the way it has, but I wish I would have prioritized it earlier. Great experience with the one that we went into. What are you guys looking at for this year? You guys are in 16 now. Is the goal to grow that to 18, 20? Like what does that look like? We're going to be opening quite a few stores this year. I don't know if we've publicly announced the number, but what I know is that last year we slowed it.

1:20:10We only opened two stores last year. And the reason for that is because with the introduction of women's, it changes the store footprint. It changes the layout. It changes how you think about it. So we had to see how that was going to change. So we did a lot of retrofits of our existing stores. And that is informing what the store of the future is going to look like, how big it should be, what the layout should be, you know. And so we started to make some of those decisions and that's impacting the leases that we're signing today. You're a systematic ninja here. All in doubt, I love it. Let's go into retail, retail.

1:20:40So you guys are in Dillard's, Nordstrom's, Bloomingdale's, over 150 top tier accounts like golf and resort locations, tons of gyms. I guess let's just start with just what's your holistic strategy just for retail? You mean in terms of the wholesale accounts that we work with? Correct. I think it starts and ends with, we need to believe that these are places where they're going to take care of the customer in the same way that we take care of the customer. And that it's going to put us, you know, look, we could go into Costco tomorrow. We could go into, you know, some of these bigger accounts. And you can see a ton of revenue come from those.

1:21:16And by the way, Costco is amazing. I love Costco. But from a fashion perspective, it doesn't necessarily elevate you in terms of the hearts and minds of the customer. And I think controlling your distribution strategy is something that a lot of brands have made mistakes on. So we're really careful about one. We don't want wholesale necessarily to become the dominant distribution channel because then we lose some of the control of who the customer is, the data. But the other thing is, you know, you can start to create this whole level of concentration risk that if you lose that one big account, you know, you're and and and accounts can move in, you know, unique ways.

1:21:53It could be completely independent to their business. So we do some with majors, you know, Dillard's, Nordstrom, you know, really great partners. But then we have a lot of specialty stores. So, you know, we're sitting here in Westport, Connecticut. it. There's Mitchell's, there's Darian sports shop, there's, um, Richard's, you know, these are like high end, great stores where we know they're going to take great care of the customer. They're going to be educated on the product. They're going to tell the consumer why it's better, why it's differentiated. But we have thousands now of these doors and greengrass accounts, you know, golf courses and others.

1:22:30Um, and that helps us so that if all of a sudden a major, you know, goes out of business or is like merging with another major and they decide to make a change in terms of their merchandising mix, we, you know, the business isn't going to fall apart. So wholesale is complicated too. It's again, it's a very different channel than e-com or your own brick and mortar retail, but it's a very powerful one. And it can be, you know, it can be something that drives the success of a business. Yeah. For people more like earlier entrepreneurs, I think something that, you know, in the beginning I didn't quite understand and it's obvious to us now, but you can only go down in distribution.

1:23:05You can't go up. So if you're in Bloomingdale's or Nordstrom, you can go down into Zoomies and Tillies. If you're in Zoomies and Tillies, you can go down into Costco and Target. You cannot go the other way. But you're not going from Costco to Nordstrom. Another huge lesson. I don't even know if you know this, but I got my start to my career with the hat company, Mellon. I was an original partner there in CMO. And we toured the US. We raised money, I don't know, 40 states, 160 retailers. It's kind of where I got my MBA in apparel. And in some of the markets, we took the second best account. and then we knock on the door of the first account of the trade show.

1:23:40And they're like, bro, you're a number two. There's not only, you can't even leave there and come to us. You're done. You're soiled. You are dead to us. You're soiled in this city. So that's a really, really real thing for everybody listening. Who's a dream retailer? We got to get this on record. Who's a dream retailer that you're not in yet? Giving full respect to all of the ones that we talked about. You got some nice ones here. Yeah. I don't even know who I would say. I mean, I know some that I'm targeting right now and that we're in active conversations or we're in like a few doors, but we're not in every door.

1:24:13But I think the best retailers for us are the ones that, you know, that I think do a great job of their customer representation, great job of representing the brands. There's a lot, you know, I'm really excited about REI and I think that can be a great business. You know, we can show up in so many different places. That's what's so unique about our brand is we have a great business in the resort and spa world. where high-end luxury resorts are carrying the product. And then, you know, places like REI that, you know, show more of the active product. Yeah, I actually had no idea. And then we went to the store, I felt like a schlep.

1:24:48I put on like a sweatsuit. I got some guys with his mom and he's like on like a full-on suit. I had no idea that the range was that big. It was a good old sweatsito. I liked it. It was a finalist for me. Last piece on retail, then we'll move on. What would you say for someone that is just looking to get into retail, there are no retailers. What piece of advice would you give them? I would say, you mean, yeah, so getting into work with partner retailers. Yeah, any of the partner retailers, the Nordstroms, the Bloomingdale's. Yeah, I think I would focus on why is your product differentiated? Why is it better?

1:25:22How can you tell that story? Because ultimately, there's risk for a retailer to change out a brand for a new brand. So they need to understand why it's better, why it's unique, why it deserves its place in the market, and what is the, you know, I was surprised early on. They were really interested in like, what was our marketing strategy? Where were we going to be spending our dollars and our time and our money and our energy? And that's because our marketing influences the sale of our product in their stores. And so being able to articulate that carefully and having a lot of respect for the businesses that they've built.

1:25:59I've seen so many digitally native entrepreneurs who are like, we're smarter than all these people because we built our business online. And I'm like, these companies have been around for in some cases, hundreds of years. They've built huge amounts of trust with their customers. You cannot ignore that. You ignore that to your peril. So I would just say like trust and respect the partner, trust and respect their relationship with their customer and then learn how to help them storytell your company and your products so that you can be successful in their store. That's a bar right there. We're going to go on to the next piece.

1:26:37This is going to be fun. I wanted to start with this, but we figured we'd get to this more towards the end. L. Catterton,$30 billion plus company. Ironically, D. Murphy, our first guest, got an investment from them. You guys did something that you just don't see. Not only did you buy out a pre-existing investor, but you bought out a behemoth. I think that's one of the most blue chip investors in the apparel space. I guess let's just start with why. Yeah. I mean, it is such a crazy, like I still pinch myself that we pulled it off. But, you know, Catterton, first of all, I only have really positive things to say about them.

1:27:17They are, I think, at least they were, the largest consumer and like pure consumer investment fund globally. You know, they've partnered with LVMH's arm, L Capital. That's why they go by L Catterton now. And they know what they're doing. They're really smart, capable operators. And the two founders of their growth fund, John Owsley and Michael Forello, are as smart and capable as they come. And they were great partners with us for four years. How early did they come in? They come in seriously? They came in in the year three of the business. And, you know, it's funny because we got approached by the Gap to buy the company.

1:28:03And a week later, we got a term sheet from Alcaterton to invest in the company. And we were doing, you know, we were doing single digit millions of dollars. So we were, I was like shocked. We're so early on. We had just clearly struck a chord and, you know, we were starting to get in the hearts and minds of a couple of key people. and within a week of each other, we have this offer to like, you know, buy the company from one of the biggest, you know, biggest companies in the world. And then an offer from the largest consumer private equity fund in the world. And I was under the impression that, you know, once you, once we do this, I'm like, we're done.

1:28:38Like, I can't believe it. Like we, you know, we win, like the game's over. But the reality is, is once you take outside capital, there's a big change in the business and the structure. And so I had fallen in love with our mission and what we were building. And we were in year four and a half of Catterton's hold period. And most people - Contacts for everybody listening. The hold period is a venture outcome as they have a finite amount of years where they expect to get their money back. Exactly. So generally, private equity or growth equity, even venture is like five to seven years expected after they make their investment.

1:29:13And then they also have benchmark returns. So for venture, it might be like a five to 10x benchmark return. For private equity, usually it's a safer bet. So it's a lower benchmark return, three to fivex. And so their goal is to three to fivex their money in five to seven years. Now, of course, that doesn't always work out in venture. Like 70 % of the investments go to zero, two return their money, and one returns a hundredfold and it pays for all the rest. In private equity and growth equity, it works a bit differently. You get very few companies that go to zero. You get a bunch of companies that will return exactly what they invested or a little bit at a loss.

1:29:49And you get a few companies that make, you know, good single digit benchmark returns. And then you get some companies that make, you know, 10 to 15 X returns. So, you know, I knew we were in year five, four to five of this whole period. And this wasn't a prior conversation. This is just you and your head. This is just me in my head thinking this through. And a couple of things had dramatically changed in the company. One, we had really started to invest in building out a very strong and talented executive team. And I could just tell once we got these people in the business, I was like, holy cow, these people are so much smarter than me.

1:30:23This is going to work at a totally different level now. Like, how could we not win? Like the product that we're developing now and the, you know, the strategy decisions that we're making, there's just so much better than what we were doing before. So I started to have more conviction in the business. and I started to really fall in love with our mission. And I was like, I don't know that I wanna give this up. And I don't know that I want the end of the story to be like, oh, we built this nice little nine figure, you know, business and we sold it and we like right off into the sunset. Like, what would I actually do?

1:30:56And so I was talking with a mentor and friend of mine and I was like, I don't know, I'm like really nervous we're gonna sell. And I just don't know if that's like the right thing. And he's like, if I were you, I'd try to figure out how to buy the whole thing. And I was like, yeah, well, that's ridiculous. And he's like, and by the way, this is a highly credible guy. And he's like, Nate, what if you just raised a vehicle and you went to Catterton? You said, hey, I want to find a way to buy out your position. I was like, they don't do, this is not something that is done. And he's like, I don't know.

1:31:28You should think about it. So I went to work out with a friend of mine who's actually an investment banker. And I was like, hey, is this even like possible? And he was like, well, I suppose you could create an SPV, raise money into that SPV, and then use that to negotiate with Catterton on an exit. Let's stop you for a second there. So this SPV, I want to know more about this vehicle. Is this, had you felt the waters a bit, or are you just doing this completely on your own? Well, from the time we started the company, we have had people reach out being like, I would love to invest in the company.

1:32:03And one of the nice things about making really nice, great product is that you tend to attract really wealthy people who have money and are willing to invest. And so, you know, some of our best investors have just started as customers and then they've expressed interest in being a part of the company. And so from the beginning, I just made a list. Like anytime I got that email, I was like, oh, we're not raising capital. We've got a big investment from Catterton, but thanks so much. And take the email, you know, or I meet really wealthy people who were like, oh, I like your brand. And I like go back, you know, I just had this list of like possible investors.

1:32:37I don't know why. It's just like, I think with my first company, I had made so many mistakes. And the main mistake that entrepreneurs make is they run out of capital. It's not that they don't have good businesses or good business ideas. They just run out of cash. And I never wanted that to be me. So I just wanted to make sure I always had like a, I had like the list of people to call. So yeah, that's what we did. I started reaching out to I started like a few easy conversations and some people were like, absolutely, I would love to be involved in this next stage. And I had enough conviction that I went to Catterton and I had the conversation.

1:33:10I was like, hey, look, I know this is atypical, but I've just kind of decided if we're going to move forward with this, I'd love to find a way to really, you know, they own a minority stake in the business. But with most private equity transactions, they have real teeth in those transactions. is they can force certain outcomes. And I was like, I really would just love to, I'd love to find a way to, you know, have full control of the business again. And I'll, you know, credit to them. They were like, we get it. This is what you want. Let's have a conversation. And they came back and they were like, respectfully, we love the company.

1:33:45We love the brand. We're not really interested in selling. It's like, oh man. So I kind of like gave up on the idea. But then in 22, as you remember, Russia invades Ukraine. you know, multiples in consumer companies are falling, you know, like down through the floor. Right after the iOS update, which you probably were more on better than you are now. Totally. And, you know, they had exposure to a couple of companies that were deeply impacted. And I just went back to them. I was like, hey, remember that conversation? Like, I can get you a benchmark return. And I know this, I know that's what you need, but I just need you to give me the ability to get this done.

1:34:20And they were great. And they, They partnered with me through it. The original partner at the fund is still on our board and is hugely impactful. And we were able to bring in some great high net worth individuals and some good family offices who are very tactical and very helpful. And yeah, we kind of refreshed the cap table and it set us up in a position to continue to go and build for the longterm. What I'm curious about is obviously that was venture and they had an expected outcome, but the vibe that I'm getting from you is you're probably going to have this, your son might run this company.

1:34:54So how do you communicate that to these new investors? Yeah, I think there's always ways to create monetization events for your investors. And I don't know what the future is, but I know that what it's changed for me is I now think with a much longer term lens than I did, when you start having what is, in some ways an artificial time clock, but feels very real, that you know you're trying to drive towards a result, you might make very different decisions. And making good long-term decisions, like for example, going into women's, that would have been a huge risk with an Alcaterton investment if they're thinking about exiting in two to three years.

1:35:33What if it goes terribly? But we know that might, this women's might take three to five years to get right, but it's a great long-term decision when you think about the total addressable market and the size of the business. You think about a deal with the MBA, hey, well, that's expensive and it's a long-term investment. And how do we, you know, the clock in which you're making decisions changes and the framework on how you make those decision changes with the structure that we have now. So I think we're making better long-term decisions and that ironically is leading to better outcomes. Since we did that, the company's more than doubled in size in just two years.

1:36:09So, wow, I believe that some of this was just mindset, you know, like in some ways, having a great private equity partner feels like a nice safety blanket. And we effectively like burn the boats on that. Now it's like, if this doesn't work, it's entirely my fault. And so I, you know, I think that's, that's also helped drive better results. You got some interesting new investors. I saw Tebow, Steve Young, Charlotte, Charlotte Hornets co-owner and the Sixers and Devils co-owner. Stemming off that, what would you say is the ideal investor for you? I mean, I think the best investors are ones that are not going to get in your way and are always asking the question, what can I do to help?

1:36:51I've actually personally invested in about 50 consumer companies. And my whole thing, you know, when I talk to the entrepreneur, I'm like, you are never going to get a call from me being like, what did you do in revenue last month? What did you, you know, I'm only going to ask you the question, what do you need? How can I help? What, you know, are there any introductions I can make? and I just believe philosophically that's what great investors do. Of course, there are great investors that get deeply involved operationally, but good minority investors, they bet on the jockey and that's the decision that they're making.

1:37:23And I think they offer to be helpful versus create incremental work for the entrepreneur and the founder. Love it. Last thing on this investor piece, I would imagine I mentioned some names and there's some other big names. You got to give me a piece of advice. You got some big names here. I know you talk to these guys. Give me a name and a big piece of advice you've got for them. So I mean, I'll just go back to what I already spoke about. So Brian Rolap, who's not a name that you mentioned, but is a name that people I think will know in many ways. He's an heir apparent to Roger Goodell at the NFL.

1:38:00He's built their entire media business. very good friend. And he was the one who was like, if I were you, I would try and figure out how to own the entire business or control the entire business. And I think that was just a tremendously impactful piece of advice at a key moment for us. But most of these guys are like, they care about me as much as they care about the business. And that feels really good to have investors like that who are trying to help you make good decisions for yourself as much as they are trying to drive a good return. We're rounding the corner here. I'm going to fire away some random questions before we get into the official lightning round.

1:38:39Okay. Can't lie. I knew who your dad was. Yep. Okay. I'm from New York. I'm a Knick fan. I know in the 90s, context for everybody listening. I did not know he was the youngest GM at the age of 28 for the Jazz. Yep. He ran the Knicks and MSG for 10 years, founded or been a part of a bunch of professional teams. What would you say is the biggest lesson you've learned from your pops? I would say that you can be a tremendously good human and a great business leader. He is, people who know him, like, I think people who don't know him have a perception of like, is he really that good of a guy? And then you get, then you spend time with him and you're like, he's way better than like you'd expect.

1:39:21I think of, you know, famous people sometimes and you wonder like, are they really? that good, like, you know, with their family and their, you know, he is just such an amazing human and such a good person. And that drives me to try and like be authentically who I am, not just, you know, on a podcast or, you know, when I'm in front of someone, but, you know, when it's just me and my son or it's me and my wife, I want to be the same person in every arena. And I think that's something that he really truly loves. Legendary. You just, you know, passively just said that you invested in 50 plus companies.

1:39:59Let's talk about that. What's the biggest thing you look for investing in companies? It's the founder. I mean, for sure. It's the operator. The old adage is true. You can take a B or C idea with an A operator and have a great outcome. And you can have an A idea with a B and C operator and have a terrible outcome. So I think it's always less about the idea and more about the person who's running the idea. Completely agree with you. You started four companies before you were 30. What advice would you give to someone in their early 20s when you're starting a company? Well, first, I would really challenge the notion that everybody is an entrepreneur or should be an entrepreneur.

1:40:37I think we've kind of celebrated this idea of like owning your own business and, you know, incredible flexibility. And I think some people, and I can tell just spending like an hour with you, you're just wired that way. Like it's not a choice. I could run through a wall right now, bro. I could run through a wall. We can go 10 hours. Yeah. It's like, it's just, you either are or, not that you either are or you aren't, but like you tend to have certain tendencies to make you wired that way. And so I would just like challenge the notion that you have to be an entrepreneur. I think some people are better off with some level of security, some level of less risk.

1:41:16And, you know, but if you are one of those kinds of people, I think the main thing that I would do is I would ask as many questions and I would talk to as many smart people as I could to try and de-risk things before I go into it. Now, that doesn't mean sometimes ignorance is your best friend. Like if you knew how hard something was, then you'd never get started. But I do think the worst thing you can do is try and solve things in a vacuum or in isolation. That's why I believe in the power of experts. And I believe in talking to experts and asking questions like, how did you do this? because those simple conversations that I've had with people, I'm like, why have I been struggling with this for like months or years?

1:41:53And it's like, you just answered this question like five seconds that I've been struggling with. And so, yeah, I mean, I just spoke to this awesome guy who actually lives here in Westport. He's an original retail employee at J.Crew, built J.Crew Retail. It was the CEO and president there. And I started like firing off all these things that I've been wondering about. And he was like, boom, boom, boom, boom. I'm like, oh, there are simple answers to these questions that I thought were so complicated. So yeah, I would lean heavily into the power of experts. And I would also say people are amazing at helping you if you just ask for it.

1:42:28You gotta ask. It's so crazy. Do you know what I did recently? It's gonna blow your fucking mind. I don't know if you've gotten to this other layer. The experts thing is huge. Like that's, remember I told you like things coming out of it, I obviously learned an insane amount, but that's one thing. Dude, I spent$79 on a course. first course I ever bought like a month and a half ago. Game changing. Yeah. You were like, I wonder what a$700 course looks like. Yes. That's another thing that I would challenge to people listening to is buy a course or reach out to someone. I do think, you know, as long as you're a good human, like most entrepreneurs do want to help.

1:43:05So yeah, just reaching out is huge. It's funny because I had the question, easier or harder to create a brand now versus 10 years ago. That was the last question before we get into it. Definitely harder. No question. To go back and forth on that one, I think I agree. It's so much harder. I think acquiring a customer is so much harder now. And if you got past that iOS update and you had a big pool of customers that you can sell back into, you're in a great position. Yeah, your ability to find lookalike audience from an existing pool of customers versus starting with no customers and trying to build an audience is like, and not to mention just the investable capital is just so much less.

1:43:42Like, I think there's always been good, smart consumer investors. They value companies differently than tech investors. But what happened for like a period of five to seven years is tech investors were like, ooh, this consumer thing is really interesting. And we've like, we're competing so heavily on tech stuff and there's not enough good quality deal flow. Let's just start funneling money over here. And then you had them being like, you need to grow 6x this year. And they killed a bunch of these companies that just were never meant to do that. And it's like, oh yeah, it's okay if you lose$60 million this year because, because we're trying to grow and we're trying to reinvent footwear, whatever it is.

1:44:16I could go on so long. Again, I want to give people, especially the first time entrepreneurs, there was a window where you could trade your company on top line revenue. You could sell your company. You're doing$10 million and you're making$1 million. You could sell your company for$20 million,$25 million. Now it's on a multiple of EBITDA, the bottom five, six, 10 EBITDA. So you're looking at 25 or 30 million versus$10 million because people are sobering up. I think people have, you know, I think they've just shifted and I think it will happen again. It's cyclical. And companies are, you know, still in some ways being valued on revenues, depending on the company.

1:44:50Like you've seen some deals recently where you're like, you know, head scratcher on some of the valuations. But I think ultimately it comes down to you're seeing more consumer led focused investors doing the deals that they know they can do and where they can make money versus being oversaturated by tech investors. I would say the last thing on that too is this is where for me, I'm still on the first lap with a lot of things. So from an experience perspective, if I did want to sell my company, I now know the next time when it's frothy and someone's going to give me two and a half or three times the top.

1:45:23Take it. I'm fucking taking it. Yeah. All right. So lightning. Timing is important. So lightning round. I'm just going to fire off some quick pick one, one or the other. A young OBJ or Malik neighbors. Malik neighbors. I love Malik. I mean, OBJ, I'm a Giants fan, so this is a hard question for me. And I loved OBJ, but I think Malik, I mean, he made Daniel Jones look like a great freaking quarterback. And I think Daniel Jones is in some ways unfairly judged. But yeah, I got to go with Malik. He's also my son's favorite player. We don't need to get into it, but I'm actually high on Daniel Jones.

1:45:57I'm high on Daniel Jones. I mean, I don't think we should have given him the contract that we gave him, but I think we should have taken care of Saquon. but fun fact he's not like him but he gives he reminds me of my favorite nfl player of all time and i went to the same college and it is the funniest joke huh you're a duke guy no okay do you know do you want to talk about i loved it i could talk shit to all my friends because they're like you fucking love this guy he sucks joe flacco oh man who just had a just had a resurgence i mean you can't joe flacco i mean he had at least one super bowl with the ravens Yeah, you want to see Royal the Raven.

1:46:33Then he just had a random resurgence with the Browns. At like 41. Yeah, I love it. Early mornings or late nights, I know it's blood. Yeah, I'm early mornings. I mean, I used to be both, but I'm definitely early mornings now. Strength or cardio? I'm a hybrid guy. Like, I believe in both. I, you know, I ran four miles this morning and yesterday I did like a heavy bro-y like arms and back workout. LJ or Sprewell? Sprewell. I love Latrell Sprewell. I gotta go Sprewell. I loved LJ too. I'm going LJ. Yep, yep, yep. That four-point play. I was there when he had the four-point play. That was unforgettable.

1:47:15Grandmama, I love LJ. But Sprewell, it just feel like he had so much unfair baggage. And the way he came into New York and just, he's such a quality guy. People didn't know that about him. He's like, I remember the first time I met him, He had like reading glasses on and like a sweater. And I was like, oh, you were not who I thought you were going to be. And he's like so well-spoken, so nice. Yeah, I used to wear a Sprewell jersey all the time. I have a Sprewell jersey. And for context for people listening, Sprewell was kicked out of the league for choking PJ Carlissimo. PJ Carlissimo. Before going to the Knicks.

1:47:50Yeah, yeah. And PJ basically had said to him, like, put more mustard on that ball. And Latrell lost it. But, you know, knowing Latrell, like, probably had a bad moment. But also maybe PJ deserved it. um one word to describe ben your brother he's the best i love him he's yeah he's the greatest best quote uh well i've already given a couple but i i will i will i'll just reiterate one that i've said which is that which you persist in doing will become easier to do not that the nature of the thing itself has changed but your power to do has increased talked about this off camera but i Put it on camera.

1:48:27Best part about Connecticut. I'm a big Connecticut guy now. Yeah, I think the best part about Connecticut are the people. It's not the weather for sure, but you get amazing people here and you get the proximity to New York City. I think Connecticut is amazing. Love it. It's not the taxes. Last couple questions. Favorite book or podcast and why? My favorite podcast is Business Wars. I don't know if you've listened to it. I just love it. Like basically chronicles like two historic, like, you know, Coke, Pepsi or Nintendo Sega. And I just love hearing these stories. I listened to one recently about Ben and Jerry's versus Haagen-Dazs.

1:49:12Like, I just find it so fascinating, these business journeys. And favorite book was always The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People. I know it sounds trite, but I think Stephen Covey was such a master thinker. and the way he approached self-development is just like so practical. It's a banger. I told my nephew that book on Atomic Habits. So I'm with you on that. This is, I want you to think about this because you've invested in 50 companies here. So who's going to get it? Entrepreneur or brand that you want to give flowers to and why? Bill gave you flowers, by the way, too. Yeah, shoot. I was going to say him, but now it feels like I'm just recycling it.

1:49:55Um, those are the mayor's. Okay. I know. So I'm, I'm, you know, this is, this may feel a little bit self-promotional, but, um, it's a really cool story. There's a company called Clean Simple Eats. They're effectively a supplement and meal planning company, but they make the greatest protein powder on planet earth. New Zealand grass fed, cold pressed way. But the founders, JJ and Erica, they're a couple. I met them because JJ was a model for us in our early e-com days. and that company is on track to be a nine-figure revenue company in the next year. And when I met them, they were doing like, you know, like less than a million bucks.

1:50:31And they've just powerhouse couple team. They're such good quality people. No one deserves it more than they do. So I got to give them a shout out. I really am just been so pleased to be along for the journey with them. I love that. I'm going to check that brand out. Last question, man. How big can Roan be? I think, honestly, I genuinely believe this. Sky's the limit for us. You know, I think we will be a billion dollar company in this decade, certainly from a valuation standpoint, but from a revenue standpoint, I think that's highly achievable for us. And from there, it's really about where do we want to take the company?

1:51:10But, you know, I hope Roan will exist for the next 50 to 100 years. And in order to do that, we need to make certain decisions about what we invest in, the people we bring around the table. where we're spending our time, effort, and energy. But that's what I believe with all my core. I believe it, man. Dude, I had an amazing time. I did this a little different than how I usually do it. I definitely want everybody to like and comment on how you like this episode. Where can everybody find you? Personally, I'm not super active on social, but the most active place I'm active on is LinkedIn and then Instagram, and it's all just at Nate Checkets.

1:51:46Amazing. What about Roan? Roan.com? Roan, all at Roan, roan.com. Yeah, go and send me a message. Like what I will tell you is we stand behind the quality of our product. I would put it up against anybody in the market. I personally wear test everything that we make on the men's side. And I'm a big, big believer in quality and that over time, that's gonna win you customers. And we're gonna end with a personal endorsement from me, the commuter pant, which I am wearing. Formerly, I would wear tight pants. And then I started dating a girl that was younger than me. She said my pants were too tight.

1:52:17then I had to go baggy. So I have to find kind of in between. This is a nice, this is nice guys. It's comfy, it's luxe, it's in between and it feels rich. I feel nice right now. Nice. It comes in three different fits too. So depending on what you, you know, who you want to impress. Baggy's in, man. It's crazy. It's wild. Bro, it's tough. I know, I know. It's tough. Because for us, like, it's like - Just when I was getting in shape, it's like, we going baggy. Yeah, I know. It looks ridiculous. Yeah, you're looking fit. Thanks, bro. I had an amazing time, bro. Thank you. No, thanks so much.