The Footwear Brand Disrupting the Industry - R.A.D. | Ben Massey | S3EP.10

0:00Ben Massey:Ben Massey, welcome to the Without Limits podcast. This has been one I've wanted to record actually for the first two seasons. We're now into season three and your name has come up a number of times. To be honest, I don't know why I didn't reach out sooner because like I said, it's been something that I've been itching to get you on for a number of reasons. And I'll come on to a little bit around your kind of personal brand and where people might know of you. But I think you kind of keep yourself fairly in the shadows. And I'll ask you the reason for that shortly. but I think what you've built with Rad as a brand, first and foremost, is super impressive.

0:32Ben Massey:I think what it stands for and just the consistency of the kind of the visual identity of what the brand is, let alone the product that you've built, which I'm such a fan of. Obviously, I was there when you first launched. I think I bought three pairs. I think I've been there every then launch thereafter, the next dozen launches. So to build a really cool brand, to attract some of the best athletes and to build a really cool product in a market, in an industry that is super, super competitive and hard, uh that takes a very special person so hopefully we can dig into some of that stuff today oh i'm blushing thank you very much it's a pleasure to be here um before we kick off i'd like to ask people what without limits means to them so um don't expect you to have thought much about it and i like that what does without limits mean when you hear those words i think for me personally i've always approached anything i do with the idea that if you can't do it the first time there is a way to do it and so i think without limits is essentially the notion that there's always a way um you just might not get it straight away and i think that kind of mindset means you can kind of do anything it might not be on the timeline you originally expected it might not be in the way you expected but I genuinely believe that people if they really want to do something they can do it that's power I think you're a walking example of that right we'll talk about rad in a second and then that's obviously you know your kind of passion projects and life's mission right now but prior to that you've competed at the highest heights of CrossFit right in the CrossFit Games yeah I know you're probably going to talk yourself down a little bit here but you know as someone that's uh actively trained for two decades competed in around sport of different natures um knowing the level you need to be at to get to the games or to even qualify for a semi-finals whatever it may be like that really takes some doing yeah I think again it's like I kind of stumbled into the sport of CrossFit really and I think sport in its own right is one of the most powerful things from a life lessons perspective that anyone could do so I think before discovering CrossFit I played rugby at school I wasn't as good as you um i'm living off a couple of titles that i don't know whether i deserve these days um but i play played rugby at school played tennis and i think it was always a an outlet for me and then leaving the school when you kind of go from this this this structured world um to be honest with you academically I wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed I was fine but the thing that kind of gave me an escape was the sport uh and that's what I just want I just wanted to move all the time like any any sports class yes after school yes like I just want to do it and I think for me it was almost like the thing that gave me like uh an anchor throughout being a kid to being a teenager and then it disappeared at 16 because I went into work and so I then started going to the gym and just working out and and kind of that gave me a little sense of what I had through playing sport but it never was with a particular like goal in mind sure I wanted to get stronger for the sake of it or I wanted to you know have bigger shoulders or whatever but there was no like real reason to do it other than it was helping my head and then I got introduced to CrossFit and I was like oh this kind of gamifies this training thing and that's what then kind of got me going after that sport and then when I was kind of realized I was all right and quite good at it that's when i went after it more um but it was kind of like a natural evolution to trying to get to the games it wasn't like i wrote down on a piece of paper like that was my goal from the beginning um which i think because it is a new sport is probably how a lot of the people around my time started doing it um yeah you do have to work fucking hard yeah it's kind of a similar I had David Shronky on the podcast a few weeks ago, and it's kind of similar to him.

5:18Ben Massey:He kind of stumbled across it. But again, it leaves me like, I mean, David and you appear very different and seem very different. You seem a lot more soft around the edges than David. But to get to that level in CrossFit, you've got to have an ability to suffer. Yeah. Where does that come from? Because sport as an outlet, I can completely get that. I wrote down I wanted to be a professional athlete just because it was a lifestyle. I remember I grew up in and around football, so it was always about the paychecks, the lifestyle, the flashy, the David Beckham. At rugby, I just excelled at more. But I knew I wanted to be a professional sportsman.

5:58Ben Massey:As I exposed more to sport and what it required, I leaned into it naturally. And I think I'm hearing tones of that with what you're saying. But like I say, CrossFit is far under the spectrum in terms of suffering multiple hours a day. I appreciate it might have been a little bit different back then. to the requirement of what you needed but i wouldn't say vastly different no i think again that goes back to the idea that if you know another thing that i really challenge myself to be is accountable to myself and if i say i'm going to do something like i'll do it that there's no room for saying you'll do x and then just being like actually i can't bother to do that and so when i had eventually set myself the goal of getting to regionals or getting to the CrossFit games it was like right that that's it so you've got fucking suck it up and get on with it and if that meant more suffering more pain no reward it didn't matter because the reward was going to be achieving the goal of you know getting to where you wanted to be and so I think that's probably that that mindset piece is something that I've carried throughout from being a kid to now it's never really changed um i think probably there's less aggression with it now you know the the because i also there was potentially a little bit of bravado with it when i was younger because you you if you put something out there there's other people that are potentially going to watch you succeed or fail and that adds for me a nice pressure because I'm like okay I've said I'm going to do it but I don't want to look stupid in front of these people who I'm told I'm going to do it and so then you have to like aggressively pursue it whereas now I kind of keep the goals a bit more internalized because I know throughout the last you know 30 years of my life when I've said I'm going to do something I'll generally do it um and and I kind of I don't like I don't like to do anything because someone else is expecting me to do it so there's just like that slight shift there and i think that's probably where the softness comes and the you know the like the whole ego thing like that in itself is i think a huge weakness for a lot of people not accepting they have an ego um so yeah i think that's just like a maturity that happens over time you get comfortable with i think that's part of your character which makes you so interesting and endearing because like i said to know what it takes to be to get to that level that you know let alone get to the level the training that's involved even if you don't get there and also to get to the stage where you're at with your brand like that takes a certain type of character um i think many people understand you know from a crossfit standpoint what the training is well documented what the training is and the levels and the times and the lifts and that kind of stuff from a cultural standpoint was crossfit like culturally did you find you fit in in that in that world i liked the fact that they had a perspective on something and they didn't care what anyone else thought again it's like one should do something because one believes in it not because someone else gonna think it's great i kind of liken it to someone who's passionate about anything if they're genuinely passionate about it they can bring anyone along on their passion like if you meet someone who's obsessed with stamps i don't give a fuck about stamps but they're probably going to be able to give me a whole host of knowledge and information that i would then actually find them interesting and i think that is the kind of like mindset that i approached it with was like i'm doing it for me and and crossfit was building this this fitness kind of methodology because they thought it was cool and they thought it was the best way to get people fit not because it was like super commercial not because they were trying to like franchise to like millions of gyms or whatever it was just they they genuinely thought like that was the best way to get people fit and I think that was the thing that appealed to me I also like that the measure of success was more sport based you know it was your times it was your lifts it wasn't like whether you looked a certain way and I think at the time when I was getting into the gym there was still a a little bit of a disconnect between why people went to the gym you know like even like elite sports people that there wasn't as much emphasis on how important the gym was it was kind of like this secret that you did on the side i don't know if you've seen the um the uh jordan documentary yeah the amount of footage of him training right is insane he's in the gym like constantly but it was never like out in the world and i think you know in the 90s and 2000s we were all made to believe like that these athletes were these just like genetic freaks that we could never be like but the reality is is like okay you're not going to be like jordan he's fucking incredible but there are elements of what these athletes do that other people can pursue and i think that's a very recent realization like they all put in the work just as much as someone else does um um so i think like yeah it it's a it was at the time going to the gym felt much more like aesthetic focused and i was like i don't really care about 100 it literally was i think when i entered in post rugby into the fitness space it was physique competitors and it was crossfit and it would That was basically it.

11:54Ben Massey:And then you had kind of hyper-focused sports strength and conditioning for the sport, and there wasn't really anything in the middle. The reason I'm kind of interested in the question is because I haven't spent long sort of pondering why I didn't go all in on CrossFit, because it has the making of everything that, like, excites me, right? Right. And so sometimes I look back and think, you know, was it that I didn't feel as though culturally, like, I was accepted straight in? You know, because it was quite cult-like back then. Yeah, yeah. And you either had to sort of cut yourself and sell your soul to it, or you couldn't kind of be on the periphery.

12:25Ben Massey:And I think I kind of was on the periphery for too long. It could equally have been the fact that I picked up a barbell and tried to clean it and saw my numbers completely too far away from where they needed to be, and maybe I put up a bit of a ring around myself to defend myself against comparing your times and your scores and what have you. Probably the latter has actually played more part in that than I care to accept. But I think, again, when I look at the stereotypical CrossFitter now, uh i wouldn't particularly someone's been to the games and has very much been indoctrinated into that world you built a brand initially off off the kind of popularity of it um you don't kind of fit the stereotype no and i think you know when i first started doing it i was doing it in a globo gym right so i was the odd one out in that gym but also i was i was kind of i i then got kicked out of that gym banging so many bottles yeah basically it was quite funny so there was like a free weights area as you walked into this gym it was a cannons i think they've rebranded now or something um you walked in through these double doors there was like 10 cross trainers there was like a strip of carpet probably the width of this type of this table and there was a free weights area that just had like a bazillion benches in there and then over like as you went further away there was like all the machines the only place you could lift was on the strip of carpet so I'd basically set my barbell up on the carpet with the weights and then there'd be all the like old deers coming in like going off to do the like lat pull down or whatever and I'm like okay yeah we'll come through I do my cleans drop it down and I'd sit on the end of a cross trainer and that was kind of like where i started doing it so there was never i don't think i was ever really exposed to like the true culture of it i suppose and then the next play the next cross that gym i trained in was my own one and i just kind of shaped that gym and i suppose the personality of that gym on what i thought was cool and nice yeah and i was like i want i want to train in a clean space i don't want it to be a shell so i'm going to make sure it's clean you know it's just like little things like that meant that probably because i got into it earlier i'd never had like any exposure to what like a stereotypical crossfit gym was so i just made it up in my mind yeah yeah nice i mean that's the next part of this conversation is to talk about gym ownership but before we do to close the chapter on um crossfit although i know that competing came alongside the your mentorship what lessons because you talk so fondly and you've got such a nice view of kind of sport what lessons did crossfit and sport teach you like why do you talk how you talk about it i think it's because that there there's a mindset that you learn doing sport that i don't think anything else can prepare you for and it's it's basically you you you do get it as you age and you experience life but sport in itself I believe is like a snapshot of the emotions you feel throughout your entire life and I think you you you experience uh pure joy when it goes the right way and you experience loss okay of course loss is varying degrees throughout life but I think those two lessons are all off of you experience them all off of going after something going all in and not knowing what the outcome is going to be and that's what life is in my mind right you can make a plan but it's never going to be what you expect and so that's why I think sport is so special and so important for everyone and people should you know the thing that made me sad as a kid was when i go to my pe class and there were you know a collection of kids that just it wasn't for them and i always like i you know they're always like a bit awkward and you know like not that athletic and i was like oh this fucking sucks for you you've got to sit there and watch us all doing this thing because you haven't found the sport that you enjoy but i think there's a sport out there for everyone um you just have to find it and and i think that's really that it gets me a bit like emotional like seeing Bo now the four-year-old starting to get into sport I'm like fuck yeah that's cool that's such a powerful little sound like that um let's talk about the gym ownership bit then I mean this is a natural progression for a lot of athletes at the time particularly that wanted to you know pursue full-time training as an athlete uh and they would start a gym because that would be the way to sort of you know make a bit of money yeah how's their training um and hopefully see them get to the games was that your kind of intention there or Or was it because you wanted to, you know, have 300 people come to your gym and change their lives forever?

17:26No, it was very much that. I was like, OK, I quite like this CrossFit thing. I'm quite good. I'd like to pursue this full time sponsorship. At the time was like a bag of progenics. And you're just like, well, I can't live on that. So I was like, I'll start I'll start this gym. And basically I was like, I can kind of live like a professional athlete where where I live. people would come in the morning or the evenings like the day was going to be dead so I could train in the day get all of my sessions in and then I could coach people and build a little community at the same time and my theory was it was a little bit of a hedge but it was also like if I get mashed doing this thing because I had like a few injuries whilst I was training at the global gym not really savage but you know like ruptures of quads and pecs and biceps and all that stuff I was like okay what if I have an injury where I can't compete anymore at least I've got this little project as well like on the side to a degree even though it's helping me achieve this thing um so that was kind of the mindset behind it and yeah it it kind of was quite fulfilling as well seeing these people like discover a sport for the first time going back to that piece you know there were people that would come in age 40 50 who'd never done any sport ever like they didn't even run just like nothing and they come and go what fucking hell this is cool like I like lifting weights and I like getting out of breath and I can channel this and I'd like to see that my time's improving and sort of gamified it for them and I think that was like hugely fulfilling but to be totally honest with you the main thing was like i need to train like i said i think that's

19:20Ben Massey:a pretty common response to a lot of even now i think i speak to a few athletes that maybe got a few sponsorships or they're not too fussed for the commercial side of social media and like having to do all those deliverables and so they see owning a gym is the way forward it just becomes you know incredibly more competitive now to run a gym um in most markets than it maybe was you know 10 10 years ago whenever you were starting it um so so the gym was kind of ongoing you're building your your your community there and the goal is to compete the crossfit games you obviously went there on the team um why did you why did you stop crossfit what so that games the 2017 season i moved before that i'd been individual and then i moved to Wigan to be part of the team and you know at that time they were very strict on how you could form a team you basically all had to be in the same geographical location and it was a team of six so it was three guys three girls we formed a bit of a super team really but we were within the rules because we kind of pulled like the best athletes from the UK together and we all live there and every day we had to take a selfie and like geolocate ourselves and upload it to a drop box so they could check right where we were but throughout that season in qualifying at uh it was that it was called regionals at the time we were basically like top three so we went to the games and we're going to be like well we should at least podium that was our mind and maybe win and then the first event of the crossfit games we won that first event by like miles you know there are a few things that we did during that season where we identified like there are massive holes in other teams games one of them was running no one could run we were like well let's just run a bit and we'll probably win a running event no one could swim well let's do some swimming so the first event was running and swimming and we beat everyone i think the next team was like seven minutes behind or something ridiculous then the next event i think we came like fifth or something so we're like at the end of day one we're like i think we're first or second something like that anyway day two is a shocker and we're like last twice wow why just the first event it was really cold it was a really weird day it was freezing cold and we were told if we step on the competition floor and not in uniform we'd be disqualified so we're all like the poor girls are in like sports bras and booty shorts and we're in like these vests and we're just going blue a bit like you were a minute ago and jane bless her she was like we had to do an obstacle course and in training she was like the best at the obstacle course and her hands just went full claw mode like and she just could not hold on to this bar so she'd jump up to a bar and then she just couldn't go across it was like a monkey bars you just fall down so we came last in that and then our heads dropped after that big time and then the next event was a sled push and we weren't like the biggest team and just built by weight uh we were pretty strong but just not big and mass moves mass and we came like last in that as well so we had like these two events where just like absolute shockers and that just buried us for that day and then we rallied and we finished middle of the pack but I got back to London after that competition and I've kind of felt a bit empty I was like fuck like this was going to be it was meant to be like magic and it wasn't and I it kind of made me then question like what I wanted to do next like I going back to those life lessons of you can have all of these plans and and and you can you know work towards an outcome but if you don't get that you kind of then have to react to it and they were kind of the way I saw it there were like two routes to go down I could go all in again and try and better it the next year but I was also getting to a point where I was like my body's a bit fucked how old were you then 28 and I just like everything was starting to hurt like I'd gone from doing four sessions a day with no warm-up to doing the same amount of sessions but the same amount of warm-ups for the same length of the session I was just like just like this has got a ceiling I was like maybe I could do one more season but I just that that just didn't feel quite right to me so then I started to think about what I would want to do next and really you know stopping competing was a sort of a decision where I was like okay I want to think about like the next phase of my life and what I want to do and the thing I was doing before I opened the gym was I was working in the clothing store and I absolutely loved kind of fashion and streetwear and skateboarding and that whole culture and I sort of looked at the CrossFit space and said well there isn't really a brand that does that it doesn't like have this amazing performance product but have like a cultural perspective that resonates with me and that's where i saw the opportunity um and and and and kind of thought about it for for the rest of that year and it was kind of a christmas 2017 we went away with with friends and i was sort of like spitballing with them on new year's eve and they're all like pissed or whatever yeah just fucking fuck the gym off and just go and do what you want to do and i was like yeah send me yeah so i kind of got back and and and was like okay that's what i'm going to do and then for the next year we like did up the gym like because there was some work that we wanted to do made it look really good separated it out so we kind of had like a crossfit studio in there that could have like 15 people in and then more like a hit style studio um and then once that was all set then sold sold it and basically took that money and invested it and started the company does that gym still go today yeah what's it called it's how do you feel about it now seeing it's so it's it kind of when i go to see like there's still some of the same members there from when i started it and to see people just like you know it's thriving it's doing really well um and the guy who runs that tim he's done an amazing job he's a fucking really good coach um and they just have a really nice culture there uh so i'm a member actually at christmas they gave me a gold card so i've got like membership for life kind of thing and that's where if I'm in town that's where I'll go and I generally do open gym because I'm always struggling for a proper time but yeah it gives me like a great sense of pride to see it still going yeah sick they are such special special places that mentioned before we started recording I had a friend come to run me this morning he walks into the gym he's like do you still get the same feeling I just got one I walked in there and I said to be honest I do like To see people go in there at quarter to six in the morning and throw it down is really special.

26:55Ben Massey:And I don't think I'll ever get bored of it. No. Okay. So like most founders, they come up with a business that fixes a problem that they might have, right? So for you, cultural relevance of a brand, but with a premium performance product. And I think we know, you know, many of the big brands have played with training various, with various different sort of, I guess, levels of intent over the years with different products, different campaigns different athletes that they might look at to sponsor in the space but I think it's fair to say like people just saw training as something you would do for your sport not seeing training as a sport but for you training was a sport so there's a huge like you know reason why there um would you consider yourself at any point up into that journey like did you have the mindset of an entrepreneur to go you know were you someone that thought about obviously works in a clothes shop were someone that thought about I want to own my own business I think I like the idea of that yeah I think I'd always I'd always been like a little hustler's probably like an exaggeration but I'd always I was I was kind of a bit of an odd kid really in that so outside of sport I kind of loved shoes I think at 16 I had like just like over 200 or 300 pairs of trainers so like I obviously had to pay for them somehow like it's not like pocket money or anything like that so I was always you know whether it was like working in a flower shop from like 6am like stripping the stems so they could go in bouquets and all that or newspaper kid or just like just like any kind of job a way of earning money I was always doing and I was always kind of thinking like okay well what is the thing I could do to earn money so like money was was always it wasn't the thing that I wanted but it was the enabler and so throughout my sort of teenage years I you know had like several little jobs that gave me that money but it meant I could go and do something I think there's a there's a there's a part of a story that I miss out which is because it wasn't like the happiest time of my life but it's relevant is I worked in the film industry for four years in the camera department and I worked up right very quickly and during that time I earned a ridiculous amount of money like crazy money working on film sets you can't spend your money because you're there from six to eight every day Monday to Saturday they're paying for your accommodation they're paying for your travel they're paying for your breakfast lunch and dinner like at 16 17 you can't you're just like what do i do this stuff by trainers exactly you buy trainers or whatever and as i went through that i started to really dislike the people in power in that industry just not nice people huge egos really unpleasant demanding and threatening and they're like if you don't do this you're not gonna have a job next week or whatever and i was just a bit like fuck you so i just have it out with whoever i wanted to and it kind of was became apparent i probably need to leave that industry um but i think what that taught me was you can have all this money but if you're not happy then what's the point and i think that was a sort of a mindset shift that i feel very lucky to have realized at that age i think some people will go through their entire life going if I have more money I will be happier or I will be happy and it never gets there um so I think you know going back to your original question like that entrepreneurial thing or that like hustler's mindset or whatever you want to call it was always there um I just I think I wasn't entirely sure how I would like execute on that idea and definitely it was like stars aligning when I was like a product business makes sense because the thing that I really thought about was when I'd had the gym I was limited without limits I was with limits in the geographical location of that space and hours that you've got in the day right and how many and coaches right like they were the limiting factors as to how you could scale a gym and then i was kind of looking at all of these these huge corporations and it was like they have they have tech i was like oh fuck no my brain can't do that and they have products and some of the biggest brands in the world they're product-based and I was like well I really like shoes like maybe I could do that so that was kind of like how I got there it wasn't like this pre-meditated like I'm going to do this and scale it and but there was just kind of like some basic like problem solving to get to a point of going actually this could be the business that I want to go after I think it's really important that that sort of that story because I think now in this day and age with people online gurus mentors people trying to sort of push an agenda around everyone can go on to start a business whatever it may be like you had the makings of someone that and i was glad you said those things because if you didn't you were someone that breaks the mold of everyone i've ever spoke to but that sort of hustlers mindset kind of looking for opportunities understanding that money is the enabler you know maybe knowing that not i mean you're in a probably a bad situation with the industry you're in and people telling you what to do i don't think that's good management by any stretch of the imagination but you know some people that don't want to be told what to do or want to sort of work it out themselves like they're the sort of the characteristic traits that kind of make a someone that could go on to be successful with a business obviously accepting that most businesses would still fail um you decide to pour all that money then from that gym sale into arguably one of the hardest things to try and crack like building a footwear brand um and i think when i think about just like how many decent pairs of trainers or shoes i know of there's very few uh like yours is definitely in the rotation how the fuck did you did you do it do you know what yeah i i often reflect on this and there is like a huge part of it is luck like you just can't shy away from it but i think there's also an absolute obsession with detail like just completely obsessed with it because i was like when you look at the big corporations that are in this space and they're still not getting it right why are they not getting it right and it's because they have a safety net because they're a 50 year old company or a 30 year old company or whatever it is and they have such a diversification of product that they don't have to obsess over how good this one product needs to be whereas i had a one sole focus it was like how do i make the best training shoe in the world and i think when you go with that mindset and you strip away everything that's when you can achieve some crazy things with whatever you're doing whether you're training whether you're you know you want to be an amazing parent or whatever it's like that one single focus means you can do mad shit that no one else can and I think that was the approach that I took there's a few different roles within the footwear industry when you get into big corporations that are present and I basically had to do all of them other than design it because I didn't have any of those technical skills but there's a two of the sort of key roles in developing a product and and and how you would make it one is a plm product line manager and then the other is like the marketing team and so you if you go into a big corporation you'll have those two and the plm is kind of the conduit between marketing and the product team if you have a really good plm who understands a culture understands the customer understands the performance needs of a product understands all the minutiae of what is wrong with the existing products and how that could be improved or fixed it's really hard to kind of fail i think so like for me i was very clear on all of those things and so when i then went to the designer and the developer and briefed it into them they were they didn't have any questions they were like okay we get this we understand why you want to do that we we understand this And of course they had questions because I think the other thing about a training shoe is no one really knows how to define training in a succinct way.

36:00Because you can apply it to any sport on earth, any discipline. People go heavy, people go light, people go long, people go short. So what you need in a shoe is this real generalist shoe. But people don't like that either because it's not specific enough. So this was this constant balance and the way I always described it to Tom, the designer, I was like, look, Tom, I need a shoe that's stable enough for lifting. I need to be able to run in it. And he was like, but they don't make sense. I was like, exactly. And I think like that was how we managed to make such a great shoe. um i think also to your point earlier the other brands looked at training as a bit of a side hustle and they didn't dedicate their like top teams or their best designers or their best plms to that category and therefore they were never going to put all of the resources into trying to dominate it and that was again where there was an opportunity for us yeah so cool I want to talk

37:05Ben Massey:more about the shoe and you mentioned Tom I want to talk more about him as well just like how you built that early kind of team but many people when they go to like building a building a business building a brand they think about the logo the name and all the sort of positioning and I think you've cracked that as well so what is the significance of Rad again like the values and the vision that you kind of had for the brand what it meant I think at the time so at 2017 when I was like okay i can't compete anymore i'm a bit mashed i sort of started to get spiritual is the one the wrong word but i started to maybe get a bit more philosophical and think about the world and what was good about it and what was shit and at that time it was interesting i was talking about this the other day but the environmental movement really started to like come to the forefront with like the Fridays for Futures demonstrations Greta Thunberg and that whole moment within society or certainly in Western society you know we were all starting to become aware of like the climate crisis and it really is sort of like I suppose struck me that the world is in a bit of a sorry state and so when I was developing the brand I really wanted to ensure like that we actually had a moral compass and that we were doing things for the right reasons and and I and and so I wanted to anchor it on ensuring that we could minimize our impact on the planet in whatever we do as the brand developed throughout those years the big corporations realized that if they played that tune they would sell more shit and so it went from being quite a like external vocal thing to an internal thing and it's much more kind of like how we approach the world as an organization internally rather than externally because the last thing i want is someone to buy a product from us because they think it's better for the planet like that's absolute nonsense you know products inherently are never going to be better for the planet like you just shouldn't make them right so i never wanted that to be a reason why someone was buying our stuff i wanted it to be because it's like performs the best they like the look of it and then if they're still undecided they're like okay well this one's maybe not as damaging as that one uh and i think really like because you know i want to build this brand and i want it to be a legacy and i want it to be here in 25 30 50 years it was really important to me to know that i have this kind of fundamental grounding in place from the outset that no one can take away because one is there from the beginning you can't say you're reacting to a trend or a time or you're or it's marketing it's like no no that's just our ethos like that's what we believe in so that was kind of the first port of call and then because of that kind of philosophical approach to the brand itself the other thing that really didn't resonate with me within the industry was every brand was leaning into like the pain and like the suffering and you know it was all like really dark and gritty and and and that was how training was depicted it was like this thing that you did in the dark and you suffered and i was like i fucking love training i feel great afterwards and it makes me feel happy like those brands don't reflect how i feel and so then it was about okay i've got this like sort of nice base of what we're gonna ensure from a values perspective we stick to but then visually i wanted the brand to represent how people feel when they do sport and so that's why it's graphical that's why it's bold like that's why it's joyous that's why it's a bit fucking mad because you can do a really hard workout that absolutely buries you and during it you're like this is fucking brutal and then you're finished and you're lying on the floor and you're fucking high you're like wow this is mega so is this like juxtaposition going on within the category and i think that's within sport in general you know you can be in the middle of a race it's really running it's really really hard and then you finish and like oh that was best one ever whatever so it's kind of like that was kind of the whole like base for for building rad there's a little level of like critical thinking and like scrutinization here and like deep thought have you always had that or did you kind of yeah i was a bit very deep thinker as a kid um i would i don't know why i would go here there's probably kind of some if we go and speak to a psychologist they'll like analyze it to fuck but i basically if there was ever like something i was struggling to like process or figure out i would sit on the stairs and i would just sit there and it would be for 20 minutes could be for two hours and think and like try and figure it out and try and get my perspective on it and and then i would go and speak to you know go speak to my sister or go speak to my mom and be like oh what do do you think of this or like what do you think about that or speak to a homie and be like hey like i was thinking about this and i think but i always wanted to formulate my own opinion before i then went and spoke to others because i think that they may change your opinion but i always wanted to see where i stood first so like yeah i've always enjoyed thinking i think now

42:54when i it's really hard to think there's just stuff not enough space there's just no no time ever and and and you know the phone thing is just like they're amazing things like what you can do with a phone you can build a business on a phone you know you can program on a phone you can do mad stuff on the phone but i do think they limit people's ability to think it's um i mentioned

43:25Ben Massey:you yesterday i got back from holiday monday night and yesterday in work i literally felt like i was a pinball just bouncing from one meeting to the next one conversation to the next and the boys were going to jiu-jitsu in the evening and it's something that i choose their nights no gi something i tried to prioritize that i get to and sam made the point you just you know you can just switch off and not think and all i needed to do was think yeah i didn't go and just lay on my sofa and my wife was trying to like talk to me because she could see I was a little bit stressed and trying to like work out my thoughts but I just said to her I just need like just 90 minutes just to lie here with my eyes closed and just work through all the things that are going on in my head um so it is like you said it's very difficult to find the time but it's such a powerful um process to try and take yourself through you you speak so passionately about obviously the the reason behind RAB what it stands for you know your backstory with CrossFit and why you've done it and no one can speak as powerfully about the kind of vision and the values of a brand and what you're trying to achieve more than the founder and most brands in this day and age and most people would tell you online that like building a personal brand is you know something you should definitely do why I went on your Instagram the other day what you deleted everything apart from one post you are someone that is is opinionated and I really enjoy following your stories when you talk on things that are topical you know you spoke very openly and freely on the Palestine stuff I really enjoy the kind of small interaction you had with CrossFit on the state of it going into the games but then also going actually someone from CrossFit's reached out and I think things you do put out to the world are someone that's consolidated their thoughts, they've thought about it, it's coming from a place of good intention but it's your opinions and you want people to know them and you kind of welcome the discourse.

45:01Ben Massey:It begs the question why haven't you done it more and why don't you leverage that platform to talk more about these things because you speak so eloquently about it? so it's interesting like as an athlete you know in like 2015 2016 2017 like instagram was really starting to like grow and after that games i you know throughout that season particular like gained like quite a decent following and it wasn't like huge i think it was like 15 000 followers at the end of that thing and then after that i was like when i was when when i got back and i was feeling really deflated and everything like that i was like really i was turning to instagram to like feel happy and i was like this is fucked and so i just deleted it everything like i was like fuck this like fully deleted it it wasn't like remove the app it was like nah I'm not having this thing in my life anymore and I think that was when I like that actually helped me start I basically deleted that went for walks with my dog and that was actually where I came up with rad the idea if I still had Instagram at that time would I have come up with it who knows but at that point I was kind of like this this app here it's incredibly powerful it's too powerful for me i can't control my desires to go and look at that thing and that's a problem and so for me it was more than anything it was like a defense mechanism i was like right i can't control myself i'm just going to take that thing away then building up to the brand like launching the brand i was like oh like my buddies might be interested in like seeing a bit of like the behind the scenes of like starting the brand or whatever and i think the one thing that i've then started to think was hold on a minute the biggest brands in the world whilst you know who it is that started them i don't know what they're doing every day so no one needs to know what i'm doing you know for me rad is bigger than i will ever be and i want it to be bigger than I ever could be and so whilst I know you know in the short term there's there's potential opportunity that I'm missing out on by not building my profile and and not being more vocal but I don't want I don't want rad to be only associated with me I want rad to be its own thing and for me to be my own thing because to your point when it gets to like political discussion i don't want people to go fuck rad ben thinks this politically it's like they're separate things you know rad is doing this thing over here ben massey the human being is doing this thing over here yes you know a lot of what rad is is me and my personality and all those things but i also want to be able to be my own human um and i think that's why i've never like grown it i also really dislike the spotlight which is funny going on a podcast i know you i know you just like you know i get asked to do podcasts not all the time but a lot and i just i'm like nah because i just know like this this is going to be the same conversation generally is going to be like you know just like super about superficial stuff whereas i've seen your stuff and you actually go into like the mindset of like what that individual is and it's like interesting psychology of a human that's fascinating like all the superficial stuff i'm just like not interested in and i think that's where a lot of the sort of measures that i was then placing on myself on how whether a post got x amount of likes or comments or whatever it was all superficial didn't mean anything you know so i think again it was just like it's a bit of a like defense mechanism for me um and i think from a time perspective as well it's like you know i am so time poor i also don't have the time to like create content or and put it up or i've built it up in my head that it needs to be bigger and better than it what it is because i also when it comes to creative like there's a level of execution that i believe is like the minimum and if i can't do that i'm like what's the point so then there's also that piece as well it's like if it's not going to be perfect not that anything is perfect but if it's not going to be as good as i can make it then what's the point and that might be you know slightly to my detriment is i will go after one thing obsessively ask me to do two things ain't gonna happen it's a really nice perspective and it's something i'm incredibly interested in obviously because I'm probably at the opposite end of that document a lot of online but conversely I want to make sure that March on does exist 20 30 40 years beyond my existence um and so you know create creating that natural separation and my views being able to and that's probably something I I fall short of is being able to voice my opinion you know the amount we spoke about the Palestine piece I don't want to go down a tangent but the amount of stuff I've seen over the last couple of years in fact when it first happened I think I donated around sort of two thousand pounds to different charities at the time because I need to do my bit.

50:57Ben Massey:I need to get. And then when I started to realize that everything I was doing was kind of not making any difference, I kind of stopped. And now I'm sort of circling back. I'm thinking, why didn't I just keep beating that drum? And I think to myself, maybe it was because I just didn't want to. I don't mind people coming to my DMs and opposing what I'm suggesting or what I'm saying, but I didn't want to spend the time having to rationalize my views with them. I think that's kind of what it was. But I think there's protection of like Oli and Oli's views on the world versus march on and what it stands for and all the good that it does you know what i choose to do with myself and my training doesn't impact the 300 people that are in my gym right now in harpington and their lives are changing and i think people sort of don't really can't create that sort of separation no and i think you know that the unfortunate thing is on that topic is we're we're living in a world of extremes right you you either have to be all the way over here or all the way over here you can't have a sensible discussion in the middle and if someone has an opposing view to you now you have to hate them it's like people can't just go oh it's interesting perspective i don't really share that but cool you can't do that people are like what no don't want to have a fight and you're like no you know and so i think you know i think we we talked about about you doing that and i i think the thing is is people will interpret the spoken word and the written word however they want to and if they're predisposed to interpreting it a certain way that's how they're going to take it even if you don't mean it at all that's how it's going to be perceived and so i think sometimes you know if i've you know read an article or i feel like and it's like properly got me and i'm thinking about it i'll say something but then other times i'll i'll read about something and i'll be like that's fucking shit what can i do about it and i'll go away and do something but i i can't be bothered with the aggro i can't be bothered with 100 people 200 people going for me in the dms or i'm just like too busy for that yeah yeah you You raise such a good point there that I've got a very good friend who's very much in the public eye, a sportsman, who I'm desperate to get on the podcast.

53:20Ben Massey:And part of the reason why he hasn't up until now and part of the reason why he is the way he is on many different forums and in the media is because he is unsure on how things he will say will be interpreted. But to a large extent, the way people interpret what you say isn't your decision. You know, that's that's down to them. And again, I think coming back to as long as you're trying to do things from a place of like genuine good intention and it's the way you view the world. people need to be able to voice their opinions because it can it can help shape sometimes maybe not for the for the better but the most part can shape for the better at least it gives more viewpoints um to the world from people who who i think see the world based on their own lived experiences in a very unique way rather than you know media and other sort of outlets that will be i think that is the thing now you know the the media cut stuff up in in a way in a way that they want a message to be portrayed so also you start to then question whether what you have been reading is correct and i think that is also quite scary because i'll have a perspective but then i'll do some more reading by a different media outlet that frames it slightly differently and then i'll be going okay is it just the way they've written it I've been interpreting it differently or is that genuinely the case and I think now because we're in this world of extremes because we're in this world of algorithms because we're in this world of clicks means money everything is really optimized for that optimized for that and not necessarily optimized for the truth it's really it's really hard to navigate um let me bring you back to right i don't know whether you're happy to share or not but that that initial kind of like investment into starting a footwear brand is it in the tens or is it the hundreds of thousands uh hundreds so to to to get a shoe to market is about a million a million and a half depending uh who your designers are who your developers are how many sizes you open from a mold's perspective it's roughly about that at what stage of that journey because obviously not outlaying a million to a million and a half to begin with are you confident that getting this shoe to market is going to work or is it just like fucking blind ignorance just go for it yeah i think i i don't know whether with the amount of knowledge i have now i would have started with the money I had because going into that category green as you like was probably the reason I succeeded because I had no idea about the length of time it would take the stages you had to go through the cost implications i had no nothing so i basically went in with a concept and an idea for a brand and then i was just like right i'm just going to figure this out if i zoom out now and i'm like okay it's going to take three years to develop the first shoe i'm already going to be like i haven't got enough money whereas i went in going okay you can do a t-shirt in like six months so probably shoes is 12 months right so there's there's a lot of learnings and and i think this is why maybe you don't necessarily get industry veterans starting footwear brands you know in my mind i'm like why hasn't this is a poor example maybe but like why hasn't tinker hatfield done his own thing okay he's nike through and through like without a doubt has made some of the most iconic designed some of the most iconic shoes ever he's a genius and he's obviously you know very well compensated at nike but why didn't he ever feel like he wanted to go on his own and i think it's because they know like it's verging on like a suicide mission or a really good way of burning money yeah um so and that's where i go back to like the first question you know i think so much of it was luck and timing and you know one of the things whilst the pandemic was horrendous for lots and lots of people it was actually a savior for me because during that period the factories had like orders slashed so like big brands were like just not paying for like 90 of their orders and so all of a sudden there was room on their factory lines and and they were going okay your minimum order isn't a hundred thousand pairs it's four thousand pairs or what can you afford right so it was completely it just opened doors that would have never been there before that so it was really really lucky whereas you know if we'd launched a brand before the pandemic it probably would have been i would have needed five million or six million to to get a shoe to market because of that outlay of stock on day one you put together an amazing documentary which i implore everyone to go and watch on youtube that sort of documents the journey of rad so i don't really want to retread across a lot of that that ground i suggest people just go and watch that it was such a good documentary but there are kind of elements of it i think start to paint the picture of where rad is today part of that is that early team and you know tom who you've mentioned how do you approach people that have worked at like nike as someone from the uk an ex crossfit again i've got i've got an idea for a shoe knowing he knows full well how difficult this is like how do you how do you do that again it's just like you're just being relentless you know i think for me i knew that in order to to make this shoe i would need someone who really knew what they were doing and i knew they would only take me seriously if the vision and the brand was built out properly so I really spent a lot of time with Tim building out what Rad looked like Tim's the creative director that was like the focus because that was kind of like I I knew I was going to need to raise money because I didn't have enough who did you raise from so so to start with it was like angels yeah and yeah friends family um but you know they they're still sharp people they're going to be like what you've given me an a4 piece of paper drawn a shoe with a crayon and you want money like this is not going to happen whereas i was able to kind of paint a picture of the opportunity you know from a numbers and dollars and cents perspective but also from a brand perspective and and an identity perspective that people could kind of marry together and go actually this isn't as mad as you saying you want to start a shoe company sounds um but it was it yeah it was just an obsession over the detail of the brand that then sort of rubbed off on tom and and after that initial meeting you know we went back and forth on email for months and talk about in the documentary we eventually managed to meet him and after that meeting he was like oh fuck like this is the best pitch i've ever had and i think that was when he was like okay this is different we were very fortunate because he'd recently started his uh footwear consultancy so he was seeing a lot of wannabe founder not wannabe founders they're all founders but like startup footwear companies coming to him and so he'd sit you know and this was like for three years prior to us going there so he could kind of start to see like what was real and what was fake and he was just like okay there's something special about this and i think that's how we convinced him but it was again it was just like being relentless and lucky you mentioned luck relentlessness and obsession in that building of the of the brand if we talk about the sort of stages you know tim being the first piece you know you've done the kind of the concepts the ideas you see the gap in the market you know yeah there's a real reason why you're doing it was it literally just like one stage on the rung every time just obsess over the early relationship with you and tim bringing this sort of designs to life obsess over trying to chase down tom obsess over making sure you deliver this note to tom in the best possible way exactly and i think

1:02:09I, some people find this cheesy, like when you start to draw analogies to sport or training. But ultimately, going back to the lessons you learned through training or through sport, you set a goal and then you work towards it. The goal was launching the shoe. And that genuinely was the goal. OK, yes, I said to myself, I want to have a brand that's here in 25 years. But OK, what's the near term thing that I need to achieve? And it was just launching the shoe. I didn't care how many we sold I didn't care what people thought of it it was like I just want to be able to say I've launched a shoe and then we can figure out the rest after that and so working back from that it was like okay I'm going to need a designer how do I get a designer I'm going to need to have a really cool brand how do I get a really cool brand I'm going to need a creative how do I find a creative so then it was just like work my way towards it of course there were other things in the in the middle where i was like okay i need a designer but i need a developer and i need to find a factory like all those basic things i was like well if i find the designer then he'll do the rest but it was there's never you know it's never as simple as as you think um but i think that's that's always the key for me in achieving anything is just doing like okay how do i move the needle a little bit and then when i get there okay how do i move it along a little bit more and oh I go there oh no actually I went back a little bit okay but you have to break it up well let's talk a little bit about um the the investment piece and like every stage along

1:03:42Ben Massey:that journey I think like friends and family are always going to want to see you succeed and so when you do present them with something that is clearly well thought out and it's clearly come from a passion I'm sure people would you know be happy to invest in into it at what stage does like the was there any stages where you're like you're like fuck I've got their money I just want to get a shoot a market i don't care whether it's successful but i've actually got people's money so they might want to see a return on it at what stage was was there any sort of like fear of it and materializing and then also what stage did the investments become a little bit more serious where actually it wasn't now about you just getting to shoot the market like people needed to see this this working i think so i think the thing is is like when you're speaking with investors there is that emotional for me there's a duty for me to give them a return but I also then have to say well if I was investing in someone I'm obviously expecting a return but I also fully know that it could end up as nothing yeah right otherwise don't invest right so that was something that gave me a little bit of relief I suppose was that that kind of underlying understanding that I had openly with these investors.

1:04:56It's like, look, just so you know, this is also a bit of a mad idea. I think it's going to work, but you might not have nothing. And then we go, okay, cool. We like the idea. So let's roll. I think when it started to get a bit more serious was when there's investors, you're taking on money, but they need more protection for the money that they're giving you so it might be that okay if if you sell they get paid first right a bit like a loan right or a mortgage right if you default on your mortgage the bank gets the money before you get anything or whatever so it's like those kind of things start to come into place and for me you know i was very comfortable with the idea that i was going to need investors from the beginning you know when i actually started to really look at it and understand it i was like well i don't have enough money to do this so like i need investors there's no other way i can do it literally no other way unless i sell the house and i'm like i don't really want to sell the house because i want to live somewhere um but i don't think i ever and it never kind of like was a worry

1:06:11Ben Massey:it's just like it is what it is that maybe goes back to the fact that you know you said even if you put it out to the world in the instagram days versus not now you're pretty confident you're going to make it work i think so and i think you if you

1:06:31fear is a an amazing thing because it stops a lot of people from doing or probably ever realizing their potential because they're scared of failing so they just go i don't ever want to i don't ever want to experience failure i don't think i am scared of failure because a true failure would be like you go after something and then you literally stop but that's never going to happen ever certainly not for me i might get to a place and go oh shit that's not going forward anymore how do I get around it but I'd never I would never fear like complete failure because I think when you go through the world and again going back to the whole sport thing athlete thing you would work towards something and then you might not get there because of you know an injury or whatever you'll then find a way to get there but you just had to go a slightly longer way around and so yeah i've just never been worried about that again i think

1:07:42Ben Massey:it's the mindset of why you know certain people are successful in business and others not as successful um on this journey then you find tom you just start designing the shoe you realize that you still have to maybe set up in portland right that's where the hub of all this kind of stuff happens was that something you foresee happening like knowing that you're building you know you're in the UK your family's here you know whatever but now you can have time so when I was when I was first looking at the category and the opportunity I was very much of the view that we had to be seen as an American brand because and I think this isn't so much the case now and I'm going back to people interpreting words in certain ways I'm going to say something which will be interpreted in a certain way but i think americans in general really appreciate american brands so if you are american you're already above any other brand and so for me it was about being seen as a little bit smoke and mirrors um you know 50 of the team is there 50 is here i'm british but you know if if we were perceived as american and started there we would be adopted more quickly by Americans, but also we would be adopted by British, Europeans, Australians more quickly because the influence of the US on global markets is so much greater.

1:09:09Whereas you can be huge in the UK and no one's ever heard of you in the US. You can also be huge in the US and 95 % of people have never heard of you. But I think from the very beginning, it was really important for me to have that US connection. and then the fact that the design and development team are there and that is kind of like the epicenter of footwear it just made sense for us to have an office there so there was a little bit of you know perception or deception in setting up there but it was also kind of a strategic

1:09:42Ben Massey:piece as well how do you maintain company culture being split across two offices or is there's very clear identities of both yeah it's it's a challenge i go there i try and go there sort of every four to six weeks um the time horizons that the footwear team are on are very very different to what the uk team are on uk team is much more like day to day week to week month to month the footwear team are working on stuff in 2028 they're already doing that now and so because there's a slightly slower pace there the touch points that i have with them i speak to them twice a week uh in an evening normally for two or three hours um and then i go there on that like monthly cadence that generally ensures that that culture is maintained um but i i can see you know as we expand more of like the marketing and and and operations team we we're going to start to build that in the US, that will start to get really challenging.

1:10:49Ben Massey:So we'll need a really good leadership team over there that I'll kind of train up basically to ensure it's imparted on them. Nice. As I mentioned earlier, there is a super, it's a great documentary on YouTube. So I don't want to cover too much of the stuff that's in there. Let's fast forward to launching the shoot. I was actually in Miami at the same time. I was actually at CrossFit Wynwood, I think it was, when Danielle walked in for the first shoot that you were going to do. you mentioned right place, right time, COVID, MOQs were lower than normal, etc. Talk me through just that week because you created some amazing hype launching at Waterpalooza.

1:11:27Ben Massey:And again, we were very much on the periphery of the CrossFit space. Culturally, I didn't really get it. I really loved the sport. I loved the athletes. But the brands, it weren't really for me. And then I saw this rad thing popping up. And I was like, can I buy it? I don't know whether it's for me or not because they're in the CrossFit space. But they accept me. and obviously having watched it sort of play out in the build up to Wattapalooza and then when I got there and grabbed the shoes I think I bought three colours I think we came back with about seven pairs and I was just blown away by how comfortable it was incredible but yeah, talk me through that launching the brand so I'd been at that time there was a funny travel restriction it's basically if you tested positive you had to test yourself before flying and if you tested positive you had to wait 10 days before you could test again or before you could fly again I think.

1:12:19So they announced that like just before Christmas. So it was Bo, it was going to be his first Christmas and they announced this on like the 18th or something and my wife Deb was like right we're leaving you here, you need to isolate and then you're going to fly to America before because I was planning to fly on like the 1st of January or something. I was like oh okay savage all right um and Deb's she's the sharp practical one um so she was like you know I'll see you later kind of thing and I remember like them leaving the door and I just like sat on the stairs and cried I was like this fucking sucks so like in the build-up to that launch it was kind of like just so much emotion there was like there was pressure at that point but not not in the sense that like oh from like a revenue perspective or anything like that it was more that that mindset you go into before like a big game where you're like has all of my prep been the best it could be what did i forget to do what you know all those kind of thoughts and i think you go into that mode and it's really healthy because in that moment you can catch stuff the body or the brain like will pull stuff out that is like wait hold on what about this thing you need to do that remember and you're like oh yeah shit well yeah obviously um so i've flew into uh our warehouse was in um houston at the time i flew in there on christmas eve and like i was like this place fucking sucks like houston you can't walk anywhere dangerous no no you just there's no pavement there's like so i was like i'm gonna treat myself i'm gonna stay in a nice hotel stayed in this hotel i was like oh fancy some food i like where's a whole foods go to whole foods healthy whatever i was like oh there's a whole foods like it's only like 800 meters down there i'll walk to it nah he literally could not walk it was like a road and i was like this is weird man anyway went to the warehouse like saw the stock for the first time we had to air freight in the stock because at that time there was still massive congestion at ports and we'd been told that our shoes were probably going to be delayed three to four weeks i needed stock for um the event so we air freighted in like a really small lot um and because it was the first time the shoe was going out into the world i basically was like i'm gonna check every single pair wow and we did that for 18 months we checked every single pair of shoes that was ever sold because i was post what a palooza yeah and before and before because i was like we can't risk someone taking a chance on rad for the first time and having a bad experience because that would be the thing that spread that would be the thing that say said oh yeah i bought a pair of rads and xyz happened or i bought them and there was oil on them or like you know people what people forget is like shoes are made by hands they they it's probably one of the only products in the world that robots can't make because they're so complicated and so i think everyone has this perception that oh shoes are made in factories they are made in factories but by workers with fingers and humans and you might cut your finger whilst you're at work and then a bit of blood gets on the shoe or whatever right and then whilst you have all these robust qc processes and practices something will get through that's just the nature of it you know manufacturing is really really hard um but i just wanted to make sure that anything like that in the early days not that we don't care now but we have a bit more brand equity that we can kind of ride over some stuff if it's not 100 perfect um and i'm okay with things not being 100 perfect because it's not reasonable to expect them to be um but building up to it i was like i really want everything to be perfect and i was like right we're feeling good everything's set up and then two days before i managed to persuade some friends to come over and like run the store for me tuesdays before i get a call from the development agency so i'm using an agency to develop and because of covid we like a lot of the brands like stepped away from them we're their only client two days before we launched they're like we're shutting down the agency we're moving i was like excuse me they have all the factory details all of the qc work like everything they do it all and they're like yeah we're shutting down in a week and i was like oh fuck i was like okay well i can't speak to you now because i'm about to launch a shoe but we'll speak on monday and then like the homies arrived and the night before waterpalooza was like the most torrential storm in my I mean do you remember yeah and I remember the wick guys trying to keep their stock off the floor oh my god it was crazy we were really fortunate that we were fine but I just remember like running through Miami at like 10 o 'clock at night being like what if everything's underwater and anyway it all went really well and I think for me whilst there you have to have a confidence and a bit of an arrogance there's always a slight seed of doubt in anything i do and i don't i think that's a good thing i think you have to doubt yourself because it makes you really focus and ensures you execute at the highest level if you're really cocky and you think you're amazing that's when you fuck up so going into it i was like what if to your point what if crossfitters don't accept rad what if they don't understand the positioning what if they don't like the silhouette and and initially when anything is slightly new or different anything different scares people and generally will bring out a point of view that is negative because people just don't like change so i was then once we launched i was like stupidly like reading the comments on shoes and people like oh they look like a bowling shoe or they look like a fucking dead tennis shoe or whatever and I was like like fuck you um but I think you know that was probably my only fear was like the acceptance part because I knew how tight-knit that community is and I knew that if we got it right it would go really really well if we got it wrong it would be like you'd be burned and that was it so I think that was probably like the only thing that was risky but again i was just like i'm gonna launch a shoe and then we'll deal with the rest the uh the piece around your mates being on the stand is

1:19:28Ben Massey:something that actually sticks with me i remember like being served the trainers so what do you do he's like oh i'm a lawyer he's like i'm one of ben's mates yeah so sick sam he is yeah he's he's a dual qualified US UK lawyer, lives in California, big bowler yeah but you need him The decision to bring on Daniel Brandon I mean when I think, when we talk in the team because we're obviously looking for athletes ambassadors etc it's always the one I come back to you think about all of the ones that have ever happened in the history of sport I actually did my dissertation at university on on celebrity, like sporting endorsements for big brands.

1:20:05Ben Massey:Oh really? I'm really fascinated by it but like that it's like genius that how it's how it's gone down with danielle like were you responsible for that yeah so i mean you don't have to say this directly but she has she been impact as impactful on the brand as it seems for someone looking outside in you you can see it was even more apparent in the early days but you know if she wore a shoe like i remember she did the cross for open announcement and she wore a particular colorway and then and then like in the next few hours it was sold out like that is mad stuff and and and and for me when i was thinking about the brand i was like well okay this is interesting actually when i was thinking about the brand i was like i have a perspective and i think my style is all right but no one's gonna give a fuck whether i wear it or i'm ben and i like and i made rad like no one gives a fuck who are you whereas i was like okay well if if i'm making a product for me which is where i started right i was like what do i think is cool and again you could say that's a bit egotistical but i'm generally like well if i think it's cool there's probably a collective of people that will think it's cool it might not be a massive market but there's going to be someone that will buy it i was like who do i think is cool from an athlete perspective and i literally went through like the list i was like none on the male side not one i was like okay women's side one i was like danielle she's the only athlete at the time that well and still to a degree that i think truly encapsulated everything about rad there's other athletes now that hit parts of it but she just felt like the personification of the brand and i think the thing about her that is so fascinating is she performs at an incredibly high level consistently but she also is a human outside of the sport and i think that is something that is the most powerful thing when it comes to being an athlete or an influencer it's like you have to be human because that is the thing that people connect with emotionally and if someone's connected emotionally to a human or to a brand that will be the thing that keeps them okay yes all the other stuff needs to align and your product needs to be great and all those kind of things but the emotion is is the key thing and when i went through like the athlete list i was like danielle is the only one that i emotionally go she's like fucking cool did you know on a personal level i'd never met her so the thing that was really interesting about her was i remember she she had this like aura it sounds a bit weird but i remember seeing her at the 2019 crossfit games there was this zigzag sprint and i remember at that time i was helping out the JST team that were competing that year I was like their coach but they were all much better athletes than I was but I was kind of the bag carrier but I remember I remember they just finished their event and they were like walking back to the warm-up area and I was like okay I'll watch the individuals for a little bit and see like what the turf's like whether there's any slippy spots because they were blowing fans on the water on the turf and so it got like really slippy at certain bollards that you had to like zigzag around and i remember seeing this blonde jacked athlete with a sleeve running towards me and i was like who the hell is that wow like she there's something about her and then i saw she had nike cleats on and i was like oh she's a nike athlete makes sense and then she ran and didn't think i didn't know who she was whatever i didn't think about it and then the 2021 games rolls around and danielle's got the green hair and is like all over everywhere and she does the two fingers up and i was like oh that's the person i saw in 2019 wow she's still around cool and so from that point on i was like if i could sign an athlete because i'm quite deep into into the brand at that point i'm like if i could sign any athlete it would be her and then i went in to i think i went into her she tagged lab management which was her agency yeah coop and i messaged coop and i realized that he had three athletes three women and i really wanted danielle but i didn't want to let him know that i wanted danielle so i was like oh there's three you've got three male athletes on your roster um can we talk about them he was like yeah sure like who do you want to talk about and at the time bethany was like making quite a lot of noise she was performing really well so I think he assumed that I wanted to talk about Bethany and I was like, yeah, cool.

1:25:17So we had a conversation about Bethany, mostly. And then after the call, I was like, well, just let me know if there's any of your, the other two are up for renewal as well. And he's like, yeah, yeah, cool. And then that was how we then eventually got on to talking about Danielle and signing her.

1:25:33Ben Massey:She gave her equity, a bit like a Michael Jordan deal. Yeah, yeah. That's a bold move. Again, is that because you knew she was going to be so successful? Yeah, I, so to be taken, like, for her, she was early on in her career. She, Nike was, at the time, I think they were leaning in, or maybe they were starting to lean out. I can't remember. But there was a lot of, like, big paychecks starting to be written. I think, actually, it was maybe Noble was starting to write, like, big checks. Not anywhere near, like, you know, NBA or whatever, but like the numbers were like several hundred thousand at that time and before that you were talking like 50 60k deals and so i was like fuck we just can't afford that we're just not gonna be anywhere near it so i was like look like this is my best offer like i'm not gonna dick around and you go well we need more and then i go okay here's some more i was like look this is the best thing i can do from a cash perspective the the other thing i'll do is i'll make sure she has a brand i'm going to build her a brand and that was that was her dbe and the flower and we built out that whole brand identity and then i said we'll also give her some equity and you know that that's what i can do and going back to the investment piece the equity may be worth nothing but you know i'm trying to build a brand that's going to be here in 20 years time it will probably be worth something and he's like okay cool and then they took tenders and and bids from other brands and they were like okay they've all matched your cash but none of them have done an equity piece so we want to go with you and that was that it's such a bold move i mean it's something we talk about so much because you know i speak to agents now um unwillingly because i hate agents but the sorts of numbers these people and these aren't even like competitive athletes at any particular level they're just like quite influential people on social media and that the numbers are genuinely like blow me away i just think do you know the thing that's really hard right and and and and i'm not bashing these people at all because fair play to them they're getting paid a fuckload of money for posting about their day and i know it's hard work but i think people are starting to their their influencers were really at this like gold mine for brands where you could, people would really trust that influencer.

1:28:08And certainly in the earlier days, I think a little bit like, you know, paid media was this thing where you could acquire a customer for fuck all and people were like, oh yeah, just dump all your money into Meta or Facebook. And then it was like, okay, that's no longer efficient. Actually, do it through influencers, give them a code and you can acquire loads of customers for not much money. I feel like that's starting to fade away, but they are used to earning a certain amount and they haven't adjusted their value. And so I think we're in this funny time. We talk to influencers as well, and I'm just like, look, guys, you're way off the mark here.

1:28:45There's a load of other tools now that you can, and I don't know how accurate they are, but you can kind of measure an influencer's impact. And even as just a starting point, you know we speak to some influencers and you're chatting to them and they're like are we yeah i want 40 grand a month and i'm like i've put your metrics into my machine and i don't know i don't care whether the numbers are right or not but i compare you to danielle and danielle is outperforming you on all of these metrics so why would i pay you that and they don't have an answer and i think that's the thing that's really hard you know it's like you you we're seeing a generation of early 20 something year olds who are being paid six seven grand a month by a brand to to post on social media it's not real you know it's really it's really hard and i think that'll be an adjustment you know it's like when i worked in the shop i think i was on like 12 grand a year and I was commuting into central London and I was buzzing.

1:29:51Whereas people now think like a basic starting salary is a hundred grand. I'm like, what?

1:29:57Ben Massey:You know, it's a wild time. I spoke to a coach the other day. I won't mention any names, but I spoke to a female coach looking to sort of bring her in and sort of be a face of one of the programs we were talking about. And I said, like, you know, how's the program going? How many people you got on it? She said, oh, I don't actually write it. And I'm like, you don't write it? And she goes, oh, no, I've got ghostwriters that write the program. I'm like, but you're saying you're a coach and that you write it. And I was like, anyway, what would it cost? And she was like, well, this is kind of where I'm pitching it.

1:30:25Ben Massey:And I'm like, oh, my God. It's mad. You're getting paid more than I've ever been paid in all my years of, like, coaching and trying to build my authority as that incredible person. And you don't even do the work. I know. And, you know, the thing is, right, it's like you've got these brands that have these ridiculous budgets that are just paying people this money. And so that's what they think is normal. Yeah, and the agents now have just inflated it even more. Because they're like, well, I'm going to take 20 % or whatever it is. And if they knock me down a little bit, I'm still going to get...

1:30:57Yeah, it's crazy.

1:30:58Ben Massey:I think the Danielle story should go down in history is another one. I just think it's brilliant what she's done. And I think the thing about her is like, as a human, she's just fucking a grade that just beautiful human i'm so jealous so launching miami the other thing so so we get back from miami and then i think you launched in whit shortly after maybe the week after i remember messaging people that i knew at whit behind the counter being like just save me a load of pairs i can't come in the bible um i was so obsessed with the shoe that i literally queued up outside where went in and got another load of pairs for my brother and a few different people um very early on in this sort of rad kind of story it was very very hype you were dropping trainers and they would sell out i remember in the gym all of our coaches i remember you sending me a video they'd be like we're working like there's a session on when the rad drop is like what should we do what the fuck do you mean what do we do but pause the session so you can get your ads but it was like that like it was very much i think obviously you'd create a specific you know a shoe for a specific need within crossfit but there was a a huge kind of cross-pollination into just like i guess training fitness like functional fitness whatever we want to call it um they looked really cool they were comfortable they performed well in training but then also just on the street and whatever else was it intentional to always set out or is this just you just understanding demand planning and things yeah there was like a little bit of both like you know one of the things that was a few things one was like cash flow when we we were buying shoes we were having to pay at that time i think we were paying for all of them uh nine months before we had them which is crazy so we were really constrained by that but also people appreciate like payment terms no no it's crazy like if you had to buy something nine months before it could go on sale how long you're sitting on that cash like and yeah and you can't do anything with it so that was one one part of it the other part was I never wanted to be in a position where I was discounting product um certainly not early on and and and for me this was about the impact thing it was like I was really conscious that I only wanted to make what I thought I could sell so actually what we were making was all part of a business plan and so in my mind i was like if we do a million quid in year one like we fucking smashed it i was like holy shit if we hit that number then i'm gonna be like over the moon i mean we blew that number out the water but the point was it's like it wasn't the intention to like really constrain it as much as we did as much as we did it was like okay this is this is the business plan that i'm working towards that means i need to buy this amount of stock i can afford that amount of stock and then that's what i did um and and then after that like year one we were always chasing stock we could just we just could not buy enough um we then moved factories and they improved our terms and so we could actually buy higher volumes and so then we we're now in a position where we have this like really nice base of product which is like more commercial colorways like a triple white or a black gum or whatever it is because the market is so big and the space is so huge there's new people discovering us all the time and so we always want to make sure that we have a product for them to buy but we also want to have these like special story moments that we do a smaller run of and and are exclusive and and feel and feel special for the customers that kind of have experienced that and have been there since day one so we're kind of like doing this this dance at the moment between the two different customer bases yeah i remember the stories in the early days where people were just like you're bringing back this colorway and you're like no it's been done once and it's gone and there was something like i've literally got pairs at home unboxed i'm just like collecting rats and there was something incredibly special about it but equally like when you're trying to scale a company that's not you know you need something that's always on and if someone's coming into the company and everything's sold out like as a customer it's not going to be a good experience exactly and that was where we started to get to a point where it was like there were more negatives than positives you know and there was just like hate and that was that was there So we launched in the October of 2021, we launched a black and gum colorway, which sold out instantly.

1:35:43Anyway, people went after me in the DMs and I basically lost my shit. I remember. Time to fuck themselves. Yeah. There was a few more C-bomb expletives dropped and then that was when I was basically banned from rad social media.

1:36:04Ben Massey:was there any fear then when you're calling people c-bombs in the dms on the rad page of the separation between ben and rad or is that the moment when you realized you had to try and yeah i think that was probably when i was like the thing the thing about both of these accounts and and rad i see rad i do try and look at rad as a human okay it's a kind of a reflection of me but if rad was a human what would it stand for would rad think being abused by someone in the dms is acceptable no so that is where there's like this balance right you know we do have people going oh well i'm gonna you know i'm gonna tell a story and share it to all my followers and we're just like cool go at it you've got a thousand off you go you know and that'll be from the rad account because I think the other thing is is like brands having a personality is what people want as well you know like as a brand you don't have to be squeaky clean you don't have to like not stand for anything you can call people out if they're being a dick and I think that's okay because i think when you try and be vanilla you ultimately end up appealing to no one yeah 100 so i think you know yes probably rad shouldn't call people cunts but i think it can stand up for itself in certain situations and defend itself as a any human would yeah i think back to the early days where I was trying to, particularly in social media, be a bit more corporate, because initially we were coaching very corporate people in the gyms, and it would actually change how I spoke, how I turned up, and then I'd look at things that Charlie would do.