Best of 2023: 5 Stories to Inspire Your Big Leap

0:28Hello, welcome to Shopify Masters. this year through our episodes, I hope you can feel that it could be well worth it. Each week, we've interviewed founders and industry experts on some of the most exciting brands that are built on Shopify. And today we've gathered some of their most inspirational stories from 2023. The first one is from the founder of Therabody, Dr. Jason Worsland. He actually created the first Theragun to help him recover after a horrific motorcycle injury. And it wasn't until a few years later that he realized Theragun could help others too. The first time I used it was January of 2008.

1:09My accident was in 2007. By July of 2008, I was back to where I could practice and kind of get back to my life. So I put my little tool away, never thought I'd use it again, never in a million years thought about taking it to my practice. But one day a patient came in, my secretary handed me his paperwork. And as I was going through the list of things, as you do as a practitioner, I was like, the more I got into it, this guy was, his story was mine. Similar age, insurance was horrible. He was driving a city bus, so he wasn't making a ton of money. His insurance would paid for 12 visits. All of these things I'm putting together, I'm like, this guy's not going to get better.

1:48and it was the first time I thought, man, do I bring this Makita jigsaw to my office and show this to this guy? So did you dust it off and you brought it to the office? I did. Yep. I took his x-rays. I said, Hey, can you come back tomorrow? Bring your wife with you. I've got something I think's going to help. Glad his wife came, but she was shocked. I pulled Makita jigsaw in my treatment room and I basically tell him, I just came out of what you're going into. So let me show you how to use this because I think it might help. Going through that experience with him, applying my, like I was patient, what, zero?

2:26He's patient one. Going through those modalities and those experiences and seeing the hope in his eyes. My goal at that time was I needed to empower this guy to take care of his body when I'm not around. And I needed that. So he gets better. It's now January of 2009, I came back from being with my family for the holidays. And my secretary says, you got to go see your patient. He's back in your room. As I'm walking back to my room, I can hear the gun on. And I'm like, oh, interesting. I walk around, turn the corner. He's smiling at me and says, doc, you have to figure this thing out. It saved my life.

3:04That's when I realized, okay, here goes. Like, this is the journey. And I say that because I, like I really felt something. Like I, it's like the universe like just sort of gave me a little punch in the chest and said, here you go. There's never a right time, but that doesn't mean that any time is the right time. Does that make sense? I truly believe you have to have something inside your gut that tells you this is right because you're going to have everyone around you, even the people that are closest to you, call you crazy.

3:42Like, what are you doing? I can't believe you're doing that. So I had to slowly, over the time, get really committed to that story that I was telling. In fact, the story of Theragun became so powerful that elite athletes were using it. And the word Theragun became synonymous with massage guns from any brand. The same way we would say Kleenex when we're talking about tissues or Band-Aids when we're looking for bandages. Once I started using that term with my own patients, hey, did you gun today? Did you Theragun today? And when it becomes a noun and a verb, like that's pretty powerful. So I think it just happened because of the product.

4:24Like you said, I was in the Clippers locker room one time and I heard guys saying, hey, did you Theragun? The trainers, did you Theragun? So they knew what it meant and they also knew what it was. So that was one of those things where I was like, okay, this is way bigger than me. For some brands, the mass appeal is an easy sell. But for other categories like bras and underwear, personal stories aren't enough to convince investors. That's what Third Love founder Heidi Zak realized when she set out to create a online direct-to-consumer brand for undergarments. at the time I was working at Google and I did what I had done my entire life since I was a teenager, which was I needed a bra and I went to a Victoria's Secret store.

5:11I actually drove to the mall, went into the store and had a subpar experience of the velour and the smell of perfume and the 16-year-old with the measuring tape around her neck.

5:27and I was like bought some bras that didn't really fit and I got home and I'm like why am I still shopping here this brand doesn't resonate with me I don't want to have to go to the mall to buy a bra and like there's got to be something better and I started doing a lot of research online looking for an online bra brand that spoke to me and there was none I really believe and this is inherently our goal that if you have a great fitting bra on you should never think about it You shouldn't be doing any of those things. You shouldn't adjust your strap. You shouldn't feel the wire poking in. You shouldn't feel uncomfortable.

5:57You actually shouldn't have to think about your bra at all. And truly, shouldn't women deserve that at least? I think women have been so let down by bras over the years that even, you know, demanding something like that was out of the realm of possibility for many women, especially if you had a larger cup size or a more unique size. one of the things I came to figure out over time after starting the company was I was actually a half cup so third love is the only brand in the world that offers these half cups so think you know shoes have half cups you know now bras do so for me there was a real reason why I had never had a bra that really fits because I'm in between traditional sizes so I unpacked a lot on the journey of learning a lot about bras because I certainly didn't know anything about them other than wearing them when I started the company.

6:51Let's just say that investors were skeptical of the idea and manufacturers as well. I think if you're pitching, it doesn't matter what kind of pitching you're doing. If you're on the cutting edge, a lot of people won't believe in your idea. They won't believe that you will be able to accomplish what you're setting out to do, and that's totally normal. So I think you really have to take it from that frame of reference of of knowing that's normal. But what's important is really understanding where the communities are and what you're actually pitching. So it was actually eye-opening to me that many investors didn't believe that women would purchase bras online.

7:29Now, I can understand why, right? It's a really hard-to-fit product. Maybe women don't trust the idea that they can try it on at home. They'd prefer to buy it in store. But I deeply down, of course, didn't believe that. But you really have to paint a picture for them to really understand how you're going to solve the issues that are presenting themselves. So that's why our fitting technology was hugely important, both to our business and to pitching our business, because we were not just an e-commerce company, right? We were not just selling bras online. We were helping women find the right size for themselves online and doing that really with confidence.

8:09And so the fitting room was a huge part of, and still is today, of our differentiation. But also it gave some investors, the ones who did invest, a reason to believe that we were going to disrupt. We couldn't get anyone to work with us. We didn't have a website at the time we hadn't launched because we didn't have product, right? So it was sort of chicken and egg. We had prototypes, we had some samples, but we need to get manufacturing going. We went to China. I spent about a month there begging, basically begging manufacturers to work with us. And eventually we found one that said yes. And we got off the ground.

8:49I think today people are more open to disruptors in apparel because DTC is a real thing. I mean, if you think about 2013, direct to consumer wasn't even a term. DTC didn't even exist. So we're pitching manufacturers who worked with Victoria's Secret and Calvin Klein. And they're like, you're going to do what? And these half cups and like, who are you? And, you know, they just didn't believe in the vision, most of them. But we were lucky that one did and we got off the ground. And Heidi didn't go far from the company's base in San Francisco to get proof that customers wanted this. And we were also testing our physical products, making sure the sizing worked like those half cups and different styles.

9:31And so we just needed as many women as we could get. And we didn't have, you know, money to spend. We were a scrappy early stage startup. And so we put an ad in at Craigslist just like wanting to get product feedback. And then we offered like a gift certificate or like product, right, to people. And we got hundreds of women to come. I mean, man, I'm impressed. I mean, it was a two, three story walk up and we got a lot of women to come. And friends then who had come recommended their friends to come. So we really, that was our initial beta group was just women from San Francisco.

10:09And I think this is so true to the city. There are inhabitants here that are open to new ideas. They love to support new startups. And it is the city that you can actually enlist strangers to try bras in a two-story walk-up. I think that's true. It is so true because everyone's used to people saying, I have this idea. I'm starting this thing. and everyone is incredibly helpful here. It is so, so true that people are really, really want you to succeed. Another founder who did a lot of research is Nancy Twine when she was setting up her brand, Briogeo for success, all the while minimizing financial risk.

10:47She actually left a lucrative career at Goldman Sachs to start her clean hair care company. So I spent the first seven years of my career working at Goldman Sachs in commodity sales and trading. And I started my career at Goldman right out of college in 2007. And if you can recall back to that year, it was actually the start of financial crisis. So I came into an environment that was really challenging. People who had been veterans in the industry were seeing things that they had never seen before. But one of the things that I can relate to that actually is very much the experience that an entrepreneur goes down in terms of facing the unforeseen every day.

11:35And with that comes the need to really be creative because when you're faced with a challenge or an obstacle or a situation that you haven't experienced before, you can't really tap into sort of your knowledge base of knowing immediately what to do. You have to get creative and create these unique solutions. So I kind of felt like throughout my finance career, so much of what I had to navigate was new information, finding new solutions to problems that didn't exist anymore. And I feel like that level of just sort of discipline and relentless pursuit, despite the obstacle definitely created a really strong foundation for my entrepreneurial journey.

12:22The thought of leaving such a great career that I was really thriving in at Goldman Sachs to start ultimately a hair care product line was in a lot of ways pretty risky. And I've always been taught to take smart risks. So I knew that if I was going to leave my career in finance to start my own company, I wanted to feel really good about what I was going to embark on. I wanted to make sure that I was launching in an industry that was growing and that had a large addressable market so that I had people to sell my products to. Also, you know, I launched a clean beauty product line before the clean beauty movement had really taken off.

13:06So I did a lot of research to understand, was clean beauty just going to be a short-lived trend or was it here to stay? And is that how the industry was going to evolve. So, so much of that early research that I was doing was really leveraging these trend reports and insights to, you know, make sure that I was doing something that was smart and that was going to have longevity.

13:31It was also a very unique time for me because I had lost my mom and kind of pouring myself into this passion project really became like a form of therapy for me. So when I would come home from work, my nights and weekends, I was able to really pour myself into this passion project. And so I had to really be smart with how I was using my time to be able to really dedicate to getting things off the ground. But I think one of the things that I did that was really smart was that early on, I found people who could help me. So when I was working my day job, there were people behind the scenes who were helping with other things.

14:12So for example, I ended up hiring a cosmetic chemist who was working on the formulas while I was working my day job. I hired an agency to help me with the branding and the marketing. So I really focused my time on the things that were really, really special to my talents, which is coming up with formula concepts and briefs and working on product names and marketing concepts. So I was really able to do all of those things in my nights and weekends. I talked about doing my research to make sure that I was making a smart bet, but also hanging on to my full-time job was also another way to kind of give me leverage as I was proving out my business concept.

15:00So I didn't have the stress of trying to figure out how I was going to pay my bills or make ends meet because I had income from a career coming in. So I think that really helped me mentally. It helped me to kind of take my time and go slow and be thoughtful about every step as opposed to trying to kind of rush things because I felt like, oh my gosh, I have such a short runway to be able to start. One of the most pivotal moments in that early beginning stages of my entrepreneurial journey was actually getting interest from Sephora, who ultimately became Briogeo's first major retail partner. They're still one of our top global retail partners now.

15:45And when I landed the Sephora contract back in 2013, we ended up launching in 2014, I knew that I was going to have to focus on it full time. There was just no way that I was going to be able to make such a big account like that succeed if I wasn't 100 % focused on it. But it also gave me a really solid proof point that such a big retailer would be interested in what I had to offer and the fact that there was a revenue stream that was going to come in. And so it was just such a pivotal and major proof point that really gave me the confidence that it was time to dedicate myself full time. All of Nancy's hard work in relationship building, research and investment paid off.

16:33One of the things that I'm really excited to see is that over the years, the hypothesis about clean came true. Back in 2010, when I was doing all this research, I read that clean beauty wasn't going to be just a short-lived trend, but it was how the industry was going to evolve. And we're definitely seeing that. You know, even some of the major retailers like Sephora and Ulta actually have their own clean standards and clean programs. So I'm really excited to see more brands get on board, not just only with clean, but also with sustainability, which is so, so important because in beauty, packaging is such a big part of the product.

17:16and it really does take more of a concerted effort within the industry to really make an impact in terms of how we can reduce waste and just be more sustainable over the long term. So that's something that I'm really, really excited about. And then I'm also excited to just see how the different categories continue to kind of merge and play off each other. So much of what has happened in skincare has impacted what's happened in hair care. And I think kind of seeing those lines blur and we're learning from each other cross category is going to be really pivotal and driving a lot of the future innovation and beauty.

18:00Now, one of the biggest challenges of turning your idea into a sustainable business is scaling. John O 'Pandolfi is a ceramicist who makes dinnerware for some of the hottest restaurants in the United States and abroad, and his interest in production started from a very early age. My initial love for ceramics and pottery kind of grew when I was in high school. I was exposed to it, and I had a teacher who took the time to bring us to visit some local potteries when I was in high school. And that experience was pretty impactful. Just kind of seeing the medium in use in a way that I hadn't been exposed to in the classroom and seeing kind of production on a little bit of a bigger scale was really interesting to me.

18:48So that kind of sparked my initial love for the medium. And I loved the process of ceramics, of making something and firing it and then the permanence of the object. So that was part of it. But initially it was high school, but it's a medium and it's a craft that I studied in college as well. And I spent a few years teaching after college and I did that all before I started my brand. So I had kind of took a roundabout path to becoming sort of a product designer and building a manufacturing company. But my love and my desire to work with Clay is kind of at the heart of it all and still is.

19:33Jono tells us how one big order from the Nomad Hotel in New York has changed the game for him and his company. We were going from doing a couple hundred pieces at a time to our first big order was 6 ,000 pieces. And back that early on in the evolution of the company, I only had a couple helpers. And those were part-time too. I don't think I had any full-time employees yet. So the only way that we were going to be able to do that order was to do it with some help outsourcing. So we worked with some American manufacturers to get some of our stuff made. While that was all unfolding, I was building our manufacturing capabilities back where we do it in New Jersey.

20:15So we did some of it and we outsourced some of it. But the mentality was, I knew that this order was an amazing chance to make our name or to establish my name in the field of dinnerware, of hospitality dinnerware, because I knew the Nomad opening was going to be a big deal. I knew it was going to be talked about. And the collection that we did was a very unique looking and still is, and it's still kind of our signature look. I knew it would be amazing, and I knew it would sort of, in a sense, put us on the map, and it definitely did.

20:54My mentality was do whatever it takes to make this happen. And literally whatever it takes. Get up at 3 in the morning, drive out to Ohio to work on the situation out there. Get up, you know, tracking kilns in the middle of the night. So it was fun, you know. It wasn't totally sustainable, but I learned a ton. And we achieved the goal of delivering the dinnerware to the hotel. And we ended up doing their sister restaurant. And it was everything I wanted it to be because it truly did lead to so many new chefs reaching out. And it was the beginning of what we're still working on now. Another company that's offering something truly unique is Cirque du Soleil, known for its one-of-a-kind entertainment experiences.

21:42Here's how Daniel Lamar, the executive vice chairman, describes fostering creativity within a diverse company. What we produce and create is artistic content.

21:58That's why on our building, you will see a lot of artistic pieces to remind people that's what we do. We're artists. And if you go in the cafeteria, you will have the feeling that you are in United Nations because there are people from 96 different nationalities working with Cirque du Soleil. So those values are embedded in our day-to-day life. And that's why I suggest to other companies, make sure that the nature, the core of what you do is really, I say, if there is no creativity, there is no business. And I believe that. And it's not only for Cirque du Soleil. It's for any organization. And that's why if you don't want to, you know, lose your edge, lose your leadership, you really have to challenge yourself every day by bringing new solutions, by developing new products, by developing new marketing campaigns.

23:00So it doesn't matter where you are. If you want to remain relevant to your customers, you have to be creative. I want everybody to feel that they're part of the creation process. So it doesn't matter if you work in HR or finance or legal for that matter. The studios are open every day. So rather than to take your coffee break at a cafeteria, you might want to go and watch our artists that are rehearsing a new show. And that's the mentality I want to bring because then again, it's another way for us to remind our employees, even from the administrative staff that they are part of something very, very special.

23:47And they are contributing to this new show. And every time we launch a new show, we do a premiere for our employees to tell them thank you because what you see on stage, even you in finance or you in legal, You have brought your contribution to this show. And with a smart strategy, growth could exceed your expectations. People are often talking about international market or global market. To me, it doesn't exist. What exists is to become a global brand, you have to work locally. So every time we visit a city, we have to become a citizen of that city. by doing some PR activities, by involving ourselves socially.

24:41And that's how we have been able through all those years. We're 39 years old, we'll be 40 next year. We have developed this global brand by conquering every single market one by one. Today, we tour in 450 cities around the world. you just heard stories from Therabody, Third Love, Briogeo, Jono Pandolfi, and Cirque du Soleil. Shopify is here for you every single step of your business journey. For more inspirational interviews with founders and experts, subscribe to the podcast and listen each Tuesday and Thursday. Shopify Masters is produced by Megan Coyle and Gogo Zoker. Our engineers are Matt Shorth and Miku Betlam.

25:30Our multimedia lead is Benjamin Gottlieb and I'm Shuang Esther Shan. We'll catch you next time on Shopify Masters.