124 How a Distance Runner Turned a Shoe Company Into a Billion-Dollar Brand with Angel Martinez

"If you don't understand what it takes to live a life with some integrity, you're not going to be successful in business." - Angel Martinez If you enjoyed this episode, check out show notes and more at www.lewishowes.com/124. Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  This is episode number 124 with Angel Martinez.

• 0:07Lewis Howes?

  Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week, we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

• 0:33Lewis Howes?

  Thanks everyone for joining me today on the School of Greatness podcast. I'm very excited to introduce you to Angel Martinez. Now, for those that don't know who Angel is, he is the CEO of a billion dollar company called Deckers, which owns a brand called UGG and runs multiple different shoe brands, but UGG being one of the most popular that most people would know. Now, I had an awesome interview with Angel a few months back, actually, at the headquarters of Deckers in Santa Barbara, California. And we covered a lot of different things from his youth, growing up in humble beginnings, to what it's been like now, having a vision from a very young age to running a billion dollar brand

• 1:17Lewis Howes?

  and being one of the leaders and a visionary in the shoe industry. We talk about how he, early on, took Reebok when it was only $13 million in sales, it took it to $300 million in sales a year and a half later. It's a very interesting story about how he took it there and the thing that catapulted that success. We cover a lot about his dreams growing up. We talk about how he keeps from getting comfortable once you've become so successful. I know a lot of entrepreneurs listening are achieving a lot of success, but how do you stay from getting too comfortable once you get there so that you can continue to grow? We also talk about his most valuable mentor growing up.

• 1:58Lewis Howes?

  And as a distance runner, he was a very successful distance runner. We talked about the principles from running into business and which ones really work in the business world as well. We also talk about how great leaders continue to have a huge vision and be successful when they go through an extremely emotional experience. And Angel went through one of those as an adult, and we talk about that and we dive into that as well. Very excited about this one. I think you guys are gonna get a lot out of this. Make sure to stick around to the very end and check out all the show notes back at lewishouse.com/124. Without further ado, let's go ahead and dive into this episode with the one and only Angel Martinez.

• 2:45Speaker 01

  Well, let's start off with, I'm really interested in, you know, your childhood. You kind of just talked about it right there, but you were born in Cuba, correct? And then what happened? You were three when you left to the Bronx, is that right? So your father shipped you away and sent you away to be with extended family and he stayed back and your mother stayed back.

• 3:06Speaker 02

  My sister stayed back.

• 3:07Speaker 01

  Your sister stayed back. So you're the only one to leave. Why did they send you?

• 3:12Speaker 02

  Well, because my father, I'd been living with my guardian from when I was three months old. My mother and father split, split up. He worked for the railroad. He was a conductor. So he was on the train six days a week up and down the country. She just didn't want to be a mom anymore. So she just split. So my sister went to live with my grandmother and I went to live with my grandmother's sister. And her kids, who were my parents' age, had been immigrating to the US since 1952. Okay. And so by 1958, they, you know, they, they wanted their parents with

• 3:53Speaker 02

  them and my guardians. Now I've been with them since I was three months old. So my guardian said, well, yes, we'll go, but if he doesn't go, we don't go. Because they've grown attached, you know, so. So that's how it happened. And my father agreed to the guardianship and it was before the revolution. So in those days, the flight from Havana to New York City was $60.

• 4:17Speaker 01

  Really?

• 4:19Speaker 02

  So it wasn't a big deal. People would fly to Miami or fly to Havana from New York. You can go to Miami or Key West and take the ferry and. So it wasn't my my father thought, well, he'll get an education in the US, which is what every Cuban wanted.

• 4:39Speaker 01

  It's the dream, right?

• 4:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, get high school education in the US and then go back to Cuba to go to the university if you could get in. And so it didn't work out that way because of the revolution.

• 4:50Speaker 01

  Right. So what was it like growing up in the US without, you know, with your extended family?

• 4:55Speaker 02

  It was tough when I was a kid because it was it was, you know, being raised by grandparents and he was disabled. And we didn't we didn't have a car or anything. So in New York, you know.

• 5:06Speaker 01

  You didn't need one, yeah.

• 5:07Speaker 02

  Need a car, but you know, it was one of those things that, you know, he couldn't play baseball with me or throw balls. Cause he had had a bad motorcycle accident in fifty two. So I would always I sort of took care of him and then she. She was a little old lady. I mean, you know, so it was just like taking care of your grandparents. When I was in high school, I really felt. Well, he passed away when I was a freshman. But but when I was in high school, I really felt like I was taking care of her more than she was taking care of me.

• 5:37Speaker 01

  How old was she when you were in high school?

• 5:39Speaker 02

  Uh eighty something.

• 5:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. So when you were a kid growing up, were there other kids around in the in the house or was it just pretty much?

• 5:46Speaker 02

  Well, we lived in a big apartment.

• 5:47Speaker 01

  Big apartment, yeah.

• 5:49Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, big, you know, adamant type apartment.

• 5:53Speaker 01

  Right.

• 5:54Speaker 02

  So there were kids, you know, it's New York, so there's kids everywhere.

• 5:57Speaker 01

  But there was no family kids. It was just like.

• 5:59Speaker 02

  Well, my cousin, my guardian's son lived in the same, he had a son who was about my age. We're still to this day. And then my other guardian's son lived there too, and he had a daughter a couple of years younger. So, you know, there was a little, there was a little.

• 6:11Speaker 01

  No, okay, cool. So you basically didn't grow up in the best circumstances, though. You're on some government support and food stamps, I think.

• 6:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:19Speaker 01

  Right. So what was the dream for you growing up?

• 6:23Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, you know, the thing, my guardians, my guardian was a very, he was highly educated guy. He had come to, his name was Albert O'Neill. Irish Cuban. So he had come to in nineteen twelve, he came to live in Syracuse, New York. From Cuba because his brother, who was ten years older than, sent for him and he he went to high school, he went between twelve and seventeen years old. He lived in Syracuse, New York, went to high school in Syracuse, graduated high school. And spoke English flawlessly with no accent of any kind. A name like Albert O'Neil, you wouldn't think he would have an accent, but the rest of the O'Neils in the family

• 7:03Speaker 02

  did. He was basically an engineer without the degree, I'd say. He worked for the US Navy in the Port of Havana during the war. You know, lots of stuff like that. So he, but the most important thing was education to him.

• 7:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:21Speaker 02

  So step one was, you know, you need to take advantage of all of the educational opportunities. So that was ingrained in me early on. And I don't really remember ever needing to be told to do my homework or anything like that. I was always, I was always a very good student, you know, for whatever reason.

• 7:41Speaker 01

  So did you know you wanted to be in the shoe business? Or did you want to be all-star athlete? Because I know you were a great runner.

• 7:47Speaker 02

  Well, no, I wanted to play major league baseball.

• 7:49Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 7:50Speaker 02

  As every Cuban kid. But when I was a freshman in high school, I think I was about five-three and a hundred and twelve pounds. I couldn't hit the ball out of the infield.

• 7:58Speaker 01

  Right.

• 7:59Speaker 02

  Couldn't throw the ball out of the infield. I could field well, but that was about it. I could throw to first, from second.

• 8:06Speaker 01

  Right.

• 8:07Speaker 02

  It was okay when we were playing little league, but when we got to high school, it was a whole nother thing. And I was just really small.

• 8:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:13Speaker 02

  But PE class, I could run. And it became kind of obvious after a little while that I had some, not in the very beginning, I was super slow in the beginning, but I wasn't going to quit, you know. So I think I had a lot of tenacity for it. And by the end of my freshman year, I was running pretty well.

• 8:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:32Speaker 02

  And that's kind of where it started.

• 8:34Speaker 01

  You became a distance runner, right? Not as much a sprinter?

• 8:36Speaker 02

  No.

• 8:37Speaker 01

  What was your, what was your main event? What was your specialty?

• 8:40Speaker 02

  Uh, the mile and two mile in high school.

• 8:43Speaker 01

  What was your best time in a mile?

• 8:45Speaker 02

  Uh, four nineteen.

• 8:46Speaker 01

  Wow. That's sixteen hundred, not, not the fifteen hundred?

• 8:49Speaker 02

  That was a mile, sixteen hundred.

• 8:50Speaker 01

  Wow. Four nineteen?

• 8:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:52Speaker 01

  My best, I was a decathlete in college. My best was a four fifty-five, fifteen hundred.

• 9:00Speaker 02

  But I ran nine oh six in the two mile. Wow, that's that's moving. So that was in high school. Uh huh. And then you went on to do college as well? Yeah, I ran in college and I ran the five and the ten thousand in cross country. Wow. Ended up running four oh nine. Like I said, I wasn't a miler. Yeah. By the time I got to college, I wasn't a miler. There was some. There's some. Subforming a mile. Some freaks up there, yeah. But I ran four oh nine in college and eight fifty three. But my my strength was the longer distances, five thousand. Cause you could keep that up. Thousand, yeah. Yeah. So longer and road races and marathons and things. Yeah. Did you ever have aspirations of being in the Olympics or?

• 9:39Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, yeah. When I was, when I was, I remember watching in nineteen sixty eight, Kip Kano and Jim Ryan in the mile in Mexico City. Yeah. And that made, that race ended and I cut off some slacks and put my sneakers on and went out for a run. I was so inspired. So it was, yeah, it was every kid who was a runner, their dream was to run in the Olympics. Yeah. But more than anything, after a while, you start to learn what running actually is. And it's that constant confrontation of a challenge every day. Some days you don't feel that good, some days you feel great, some days you're not inspired, other days, you know, it's pouring rain, freezing cold, and you just have to go run.

• 10:23Speaker 02

  And you, as a kid, that's an incredibly important lesson to learn, that it takes commitment. Yeah. And you have to believe in yourself and you can actually do whatever the hell you want. Yeah. There's no, there's no limit to what you can do. I, I, you know, you, in high school, I probably could have run faster. Looking back on it, but when I was in high school, it was doing everything it needed to do for me, you know, it was fulfilling for me. What did it fulfill? Um, well, I wanted, I wanted to be an athlete. I always liked sports. I wanted to show to myself that I had what it took to be successful at sports.

• 11:05Speaker 02

  And then the lesson of running is that it's about, you know, that's what you learn to be successful in life. All those lessons are, it's about more, it's not really about running. Right. So running was a metaphor for lots of things that you need to learn and. Interesting. Today, you see that in high school, colleges love to recruit cross-country kids because they're always the kids that sail through college. They, they, no issues. Consistent on a long term. Well, because they've, they've trained themselves in their minds how to do that. I don't know if that's because that's the kid who comes to running in the first place or if that, or if running, I think it's a combination. But the cross-country kids, and I coached cross-country in Massachusetts after I retired from REVA for a few years, and the same thing.

• 11:49Speaker 02

  Those kids were, you know, we had no behavioral issues or motivational issues. They all wanted to be successful. What they lacked was confidence and they lacked, they need mentorship and they need all the things that kids need. But if you point them in the right direction, that they're self-directed young people. And runners tend to be like that. Yeah. So it's something about that sport and something about those personalities that come to that sport. Sure. Very introspective, self-aware. Yeah, self-directed, highly motivated. You can't get very far in the sport if you're not that. No, you get, you know, the exhaustion, you'll give up because who wants to run that far in the first place?

• 12:31Speaker 02

  I remember as, as when I first started running, several of the older guys on the team said, "We only have one rule, you can't stop." Wow. That's it. But you can go as slow as you want? You can go as slow as you need to go, but you cannot stop. No walking. At least a jog. No walking. And, and you can't, and then in a race, the rule was you can never drop out. That's a cardinal sin is to drop out of a race. Even if, you know, you, you, you can't run any faster, you slow down, everybody's passing you, you have to finish. Wow. So those were actually pretty important rules that you learned. And I had those, those rules are still with me. No walking and you can't drop out. Did you ever drop out of a race? Never. Never? Never. Now, do you feel like, do you take that same principle and apply it to your businesses?

• 13:16Speaker 02

  I, I, I don't do it in a conscious way, but it's a subliminal subconscious orientation that I have. Yeah, that is how I approach it. I approach, I just approach life that way. It's not just business, it's just, this is just an extension of Yeah. of who you are. You know, if you have a, if you have a shitty life, you're gonna have a shitty business, frankly. Yeah. You know, if you, if you don't understand what it takes to live a life with some integrity, you're not gonna be successful in business. It really just starts with that. Doing what you say you're gonna do and, you know, driving yourself to a vision and goal that you may have, overcoming obstacles, treating people the way you'd like to be treated. And, you know, and people respect that and they, I think that they aspire to, to, to

• 14:01Speaker 02

  work in that kind of an environment. Right. Where people are pretty straightforward. And so I, I try to emulate that here. That's, that's what I'm about. So I, I don't tolerate deviation from that because everybody can do that. It's like, don't drop out. I can say that to any bunch of runners and it doesn't matter if you're talented or not talented. You can live by that rule. Yeah. Unless you have a physical injury, that's different. Sure. To give you an example, my son, Julian, who ran cross country, he's 24. He ran cross country for Claremont McKenna his senior year. And he'd always heard me drill this. And I'm not a drill sergeant, believe me, I'm not. But he'd always heard me say this. And, uh, senior year in college, his league meet, when he knew the team was depending on him, and he was like the number two or three man on the team. Uh, and it's a five mile

• 14:45Speaker 02

  cross country race. At the two and a half mile mark, he felt this really sharp pain in his leg, in his thigh, in his shin area, lower leg. But he was not gonna drop out. And he, and he started slowing down. And I could see something was wrong. And we're out there, Julian, what's the matter? And he was grimacing. And it turns out, he finished the race and he had a broken leg. Oh, my gosh. He finished the race. He fractured his leg at the two and a half mile mark and still finished the race. Wow. And he couldn't even walk at the end. And then the next, you know, two hours later, he's in a cast. So. Now, would you have advised him to? No. Drop out? I would've said, Julian, you should've dropped out. And he goes, I don't drop out that. But he's like, you told me, Dad. No, it wasn't even, he, he wasn't even that. He said, no, I don't do that. Wow.

• 15:30Speaker 02

  He doesn't do that. I would've dropped out. I would've dropped out. So, you know, I mean, it's, these are the kind of kids. Yeah. People there. And it's no surprise that they're generally speaking quite successful in business. So what attracted you to distance running in the first place? Uh, look, there's no. Do they get you or you chose? Remember, I was like 5'3". Right. In distance running, there's no coach that's gonna bench you. There's no coach that tells you you can't play. Then the clock never lies. There's no subjectivity. Right. It's all the same playing field. Same, same race. Exactly. You can, clock does not lie. That's true. And so that's what attracted me is absolute. I could be as good as I wanted to be. It was up to you. It was up to me. Wasn't up to the coaches. You didn't like me. Putting you in the game. Exactly. And, you know, doing me a favor and letting me play any.

• 16:16Speaker 02

  Yeah. Uh, no, none of that. So that's what attracted me to it. Just the idea that it's all up to me. I like that. I like it. So what attracted you in the, the footwear business in the first? Well, that was a natural extension of lo- of loving running. I mean, when I got in, I s- I graduated from high school in seventy-three. And at that time, uh, I, you know, this is startup company in Oregon called Nike. And it really wasn't even called Nike. It was called Blue Ribbon Sports. And we were buying shoes from Blue Ribbon Sports in Berkeley in some guy's basement. Really? And the shoes they sold were Onitsuka Tiger. That's, they were these shoes from Japan. Mm-hmm. But there were no other running shoes except Onitsuka Tiger back then. So we wanted running shoes. So we'd go to Berkeley and we'd buy the shoes.

• 16:59Speaker 02

  The distributor called BRS, Blue Ribbon Sports, was Phil Knight, and they were importing, uh, those shoes from Japan. Hmm. And that later became Nike when basically they absconded with, uh, Onitsuka Tiger's patents, uh, patterns and names of product. And they just relabeled it all Nike. Right. Uh, which is interesting. People don't talk about that, but that was fact. And, uh, anyway, so, um, by the time I was in college and graduating in seventy-seven, the Nike, the running boom had, had happened or was happening. And I saw people that I had known making a living from running. And I, you know, I, I was a rhetoric major, so I, I was always good at, at logic and business and Sure.

• 17:42Speaker 02

  the logic of business. And I can do basic arithmetic really well. Mm-hmm. Don't ask me to do calculus. Uh, it doesn't, you know, I got through two years of calculus in college, but I haven't used it since. Sure. Business is, business math is, is arithmetic. Pluses and minuses, pretty much it. You could argue that it's different now with I T, et cetera, but. I'll I'll persist in that that opinion. And so when I saw these people making a living from it, I thought, you know, why not me? I could I can make a living from my passion, which is what everybody would want to do. And so I wanted to open a running shoe store. I was well known in the Bay Area, San Francisco Bay Area,

• 18:22Speaker 02

  for running and racing, and I won a lot of races, a pretty well known runner. So people. Was this college or after? After college. Okay. So you're like semi professional then or what? Yeah. But you couldn't be professional. Just like amateur. If you got caught taking any money or any payment, you would be quote banned for life. Got you. Okay. There was a thing called the AAU. Gotcha. Athletic Union and they there's a bunch of old men, I'm talking old men, these are seventy, eighty year old guys, who maybe ran a race in nineteen twenty three and then they joined the AAU to protect the integrity of amateurism. Right. So it was a foundation of the Olympics. It's all it was total nonsense even then. Right. Uh, but because you can't, you can't be an athlete and devote all that time and. Not get paid.

• 19:07Speaker 02

  And not get, at least you're remunerated for showing up. Right. Yeah. You know, if you want to compete in a race somewhere across the country and and you don't have a job or you have a part time job because you need to train, how are you going to afford a plane ticket to do that? Yeah. So anyway, so we were getting paid uh under the table as expenses on occasion. Sure. Travel or whatever. Yeah. Yeah, people would occasionally you get like a ticket to a meet and they send you a first class ticket and you could cash it in for a coach ticket. Right, right, right. Or you get hotel stipend and you pack six guys in a room and you split the money that. Sure. They gave you, you know, so that was just the way you had to do it. Right.

• 19:50Speaker 02

  And so, yeah, so after college, um, I went to work for the department store chain called Carter Holly Hill. I used to own uh Neiman Marcus, um, important capwells up in the Bay Area, some other stores. And uh, so I learned retail. I was there for about eighteen months or something like that. And my goal there was to learn basic retail methodology and then uh I left that job and went to work. Runner's World Magazine to run the store that they were opening in Mountain View. And this is one of the first kind of. This was actually the first running shoe specialty store on the west coast. Uh, well, let me, yeah, I'd say it was the most advanced running shoe specialty store on the west coast. There was one more in Gainesville, Florida called Fidipides.

• 20:32Speaker 02

  That was owned by a famous runner and but we had starting line sports, which was owned by Runner's World. And so then after a year or two, I struck a deal with them to buy half the store. They decided they didn't want to be in retail. We had a mail order business too. And then about a little after that, I opened a second store in Alameda, which I own outright. So I had those two stores and I was running, still racing, still training. I had stores were open seven days a week. I had a running club. We had a running club with like 300 people in it. We had a big road race we put on still going on in Alameda. And, uh, you know, it was, it was pretty intense. I mean, talk about burning the candle at both ends. I mean, it was, the racing went out the window because I didn't have time to train. And then I, I took a job.

• 21:17Speaker 02

  These two guys came in my store one day and one of them was quite heavy. And the other one was a chain smoker. And it was obvious that neither of them had ever run a step in their lives. And they're selling this brand of shoe from England called Reebok. And I knew Reebok because I had a pair in high school and I'd ordered them from England. It was a small company then? It's a tiny company. It was, they made handmade shoes for the high end elite British athletes. So it's a couple million dollars a year in business or less? Yeah, tiny, small. I mean, I'd be surprised if it did a couple million. I mean, it was really small. Sure. But it was a super geek brand, you know? And the only people knew about Reebok. They, they were famous for their shoes being ridiculously light. There was nothing to them. Talk about minimalist.

• 22:00Speaker 02

  These were the original minimalist shoes and they were made of kangaroo leather and. They were, they were cool looking and the track spikes were pretty cool looking. And but and only the top level people had them. So if you had a pair of those, you better be running fast.

• 22:13Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 22:14Speaker 02

  So anyway, these guys are came in store. They were selling Reebok. They had just acquired distribution in the US for Reebok. And they, they didn't know anything about it. They knew nothing about running. They, they really didn't know what the hell they were talking about.

• 22:27Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 22:27Speaker 02

  So one thing led to another and I ended up becoming the sales rep for Northern California, Oregon, and Washington. Cause I, what prompted me to do that was a, I remember seeing all the reps that used to come in and call on me. They were all driving BMWs. They didn't seem to work. All they did was take me to lunch and they were, they were home by three. And I kept thinking, you know, what am I doing wrong? I'm obviously on the wrong side of the wall here.

• 22:52Speaker 01

  Right. Working all day, all night.

• 22:54Speaker 02

  Yeah. And so I thought, why don't, I think I'd rather get on that side, figure out, figure that out. So the opportunity came up and I had two store managers that I hired to run the stores. And then I went on the road. So selling Reebok. In Nike's backyard, actually.

• 23:11Speaker 01

  Right, right. And then there's a famous story about how you kind of were the champion for the aerobics shoe.

• 23:18Speaker 02

  Right. I, I did that shoe.

• 23:20Speaker 01

  And so, and that's kind of what took Reebok from whatever, a few million or nothing to kind of like a few hundred to millions, right?

• 23:26Speaker 02

  Right. Yeah. We pretty much went from thirteen million dollars to three hundred million dollars in a year and a half.

• 23:33Speaker 01

  Wow. Because of this one shoe?

• 23:35Speaker 02

  Pretty much, yeah.

• 23:37Speaker 01

  And so how did this, how did this come about? Is it, I think it was a story about with your, your wife was taking.

• 23:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, my wife was taking aerobics and I, whenever I wasn't, I was on the road three weeks every month and, and home one week. Which is horrible because we just got married.

• 23:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:51Speaker 02

  Not good. So, so whenever I was home, I, I wanted to do aerobics and do whatever she was doing. So I noticed all the women in the aerobics class were barefoot on either carpeted floors or concrete or wood. And some of them were wearing big, bulky looking running shoes. So, and I also noticed that if on Monday, the instructor was wearing a pink headband. By Wednesday, everybody was wearing a pink headband. Ah, interesting. So it occurred to me that two things. Number one that we need is a shoe for aerobics. And I know exactly what it needed to look like because I had a pair of track spikes at home. That had a very, they were kangaroo leather. They had an open toe box and uh white and they almost, they looked kinda like a jazz dance shoe. Hmm. Capizio, which is a shoe that was famous back then.

• 24:36Speaker 02

  And um, so I thought that's the shoe. Now we just need to make that into a sort of a court shoe. More comfortable. Add a little cushioning. Yeah. And uh, so that's what we did. So how did you make it happen? Did you talk to the CEO and say let's? Yeah, I had, I called him up, said I want to do an aerobic shoe. And he said, what's aerobics? He wasn't in exactly in the thick of fitness. Right. And uh, so then I, there was another guy I worked for the company who was in charge of of development and, and you know, product. So he and I got together. I brought him the half of, the half pair of my track spikes, which I never got back. And uh, the uh, I drew it on napkin. I said, look, it's gotta be, it's gotta look like this.

• 25:19Speaker 02

  It's gotta have this open toe, you know, it's gotta have some cushioning, some foxing like this particular racquetball shoe. Racquetball was big back then. So racquetball shoes had a uh, some foxing in the heel and the toe area. Okay. And so I said, this is what, but the most important, it's gotta look like a jazz shoe. It's gotta look super soft. I wanted to use kangaroo leather, but at the time kangaroos were an endangered species, which is hard to believe now because they're eating half of Australia. But at the time, you couldn't import kangaroo leather to the US. Hmm. And uh, all of the best shoes in the world for performance were kangaroo. You know, all, even to this day, all the best soccer shoes that you see the soccer players at a world-class level are all wearing kangaroo shoes. Really? Because kangaroo is incredibly thin, very, very light and super strong. Yeah.

• 26:04Speaker 02

  And when it's exposed to water, it doesn't dry up. So it actually just forms to your toes. So what a soccer player does Hmm. is you buy the shoes a half size or a size too small. And then you come all into. You get them wet, leave them on your feet. And when they dry, you have a shoe that's formed to your foot. Perfect. You could feel the ball because they're so light. I mean, the leather's so thin and super strong. But same true, same as true to track spikes. So all these old Adidas sprint spikes were kangaroo. Interesting. So you worked with this guy on the, the CEO kinda laughed at you. Yeah, he didn't think there was much to that.

• 26:40Speaker 01

  And then you worked with the development product developer guy?

• 26:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:43Speaker 01

  And so you just worked with him behind the CEO's back or he know about it?

• 26:46Speaker 02

  Pretty much, yeah, behind the back.

• 26:48Speaker 01

  Wow, okay.

• 26:49Speaker 02

  But we were, you know, look, I remember stopping after one of my trips and calling him up from a place up on I five. In those days, stopping a payphone call back to Boston. I was pissed because I just spent three weeks on the road and lost a hundred and thirty dollars, you know? And I'd been eating at McDonald's and not training and sleeping in motel six. And I lost a hundred and thirty dollars and the reason for it was that I, people are canceling orders because the running shoe boom was plateauing. And so we were not in the top five brands in any store. And, you know, retailers are saying, well, I gotta cut back to five brands for running shoes and you're not in them.

• 27:29Speaker 02

  So I don't care how nice a guy you are, I don't care how good you run, yes, we could come in the town, we run together, you take us to lunch, blah, blah, blah.

• 27:36Speaker 01

  People aren't buying them.

• 27:36Speaker 02

  But business is business and you guys are not, even though we had a runner's world, five star rating and all that stuff you needed at the time. It just wasn't happening. So, and this, and if I couldn't do it, no rep in the country is gonna do it. Cause I, I was able to talk to running stores coming for money. So I knew we were in trouble. So, you know, I, I said that, so when I talked to the product guy, I said, look, man, I'm not gonna be getting paid much longer anyway. So what's the difference?

• 28:06Speaker 01

  Right.

• 28:07Speaker 02

  I'm either gonna lose my job because I quit or I'm losing my job because I get fired, but either way, I'm not getting paid. So we gotta figure out something and let's take a shot. I wanna take a shot at this aerobics thing because the other, the other important point, besides the fact that, you know, aerobics was all women. Who buys shoes? Women buy, I came across this little nit.

• 28:27Speaker 01

  How's it shoes?

• 28:29Speaker 02

  I, I came across a little nugget back then because I was doing a little research in the library and. The nugget was that women bought eight times as much footwear as men. Wow. Eight times, that's true, that's true. And I wouldn't be surprised if the ratio is about the same today. Uh, and if it's not the same, it's only tailed up because of athletic footwear. Hmm. Cause back then, most guys had one pair of Jack Purcell's or Chuck Taylors. And that was it for their athletic footwear. Wow. And women had, and to this day, they buy outfits. They buy color, they buy season. Guys buy a pair of shoes and wear them until they, they can't wear them anymore. Yeah. And that's still true. Yeah. Right? So if you're in the shoe business and you're not selling shoes to women, you got a big problem. Hmm. And I'd already known that.

• 29:12Speaker 02

  Cause Reebok, we were doing a good job selling women's shoes. Women's running shoes. Only because we put some color into them, really. And so, so the fact, fact one was that, you know, women who were doing aerobics, the instructor was super influential because of the pink headband thing. Hmm. And so I said to this guy, and I said, look, what I'm gonna do, you just get me some shoes. Wow. Give me a couple hundred pair of shoes. I'm gonna put them on the instructors. And it's an aerobic shoe, the first of its kind, and we'll see what happens. Wow. And, and that's what I did. In the meantime, I created a program, I'd shown the sample around to women and instructors. And I'd said, look, this is an aerobic shoe, here's why it's an aerobic shoe, here's, and I, they didn't even hear a word I was saying, because they were, they loved the shoe, it was so cute. Wow, there's like.

• 29:56Speaker 02

  It made your feet look small, look great with outfits, and it came in a bunch of colors. Right, that's all they cared about. And so, well, it isn't that people were superficial, it's just that women have a different perspective for buying footwear. It needs to match up. It doesn't need to be functional. You needed to make pink aerobic shoes to match the pink leotards. Right. Or dark, or light blue aerobic shoes to match the light blue leotards. So we made shoes that match a color of the clothes. It was not brain surgery, you know? But it was revolutionary thing in, in the athletic world. Because back then, women, this is pre-title nine, so women were not supposed to sweat. Right. It was not considered feminine to sweat in public. Hmm. The other thing that was not considered good was muscles on women was considered butch.

• 30:41Speaker 02

  Yeah. This is all before you were born, probably, so women were not supposed to have muscles. Yeah. You look all dikey, pardon my French, you know? Sure. That's, that's what people were saying. Right. And I remember when Jane Fonda, you know, came out with a Jane Fonda workout and Jane had, Jane had guns, she had biceps, she had deltoids and women were saying, I don't like that. That looks so, she looks so butch. Well, little do you know, you know, now years later, that's considered as feminine as, as anything. And, uh, but back, this is nineteen eighty and that wasn't the case. Yeah. So, you know, effectively I saw an opportunity to kill all those birds of one stone, you know, introduce a product line that women wanted to buy because women were buying the majority

• 31:26Speaker 02

  of footwear and I knew that if we gave them athletic footwear, they would be buying the majority of athletic footwear. Hmm. And there was an emerging opportunity to create a movement among women that was already starting and Jackie Sorensen, who was aerobics person, Jane Fonda and a few others were starting this thing. And it was really about women discovering the power of physical activity and how it influenced your self-conscious, uh, self-awareness and your feeling of, uh, power, if you will, you know? So, no different than running had for me. So, I, I thought for me, aerobics was about much more than, than aerobics and it was about much more than selling shoes. Aerobics was a, a vehicle for women to discover the power, uh, that they could get through physical activity. Oh.

• 32:08Speaker 02

  And, uh, how, what that does for you, the confidence it builds in you. Right. Uh, it's not just physical strength, it gives you emotional strength, you know? Cause I knew that for, cause it had done that for me. For running or? For running. Yeah. And so I figured, you know, and I saw it, I saw it happening. Women were really getting into it and they, this was an environment where they could be themselves and not worry about what men thought and have a lot of fun and get stronger and, and you could see people transform. Hmm. They lost, they'd lose forty pounds, suddenly they were strong and fit and they, then they started running. All that stuff happened because of what, what we did with aerobics, what we contributed to very greatly. And that was the purpose of doing it, to tell you the truth. That really was the purpose of it.

• 32:53Speaker 02

  That was Reba, that was the purpose of Reba. To empower women. Right. Through physical activity. That was the purpose of Reba. Until we stopped letting that be our purpose, Reebok was bigger than Nike.

• 33:04Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 33:05Speaker 02

  Reebok, we went blowing past Nike in about nineteen eighty-four, eighty-five. Suddenly, we went past them at six hundred million dollars. They didn't know what hit them. They didn't understand.

• 33:16Speaker 01

  You were at like ten million four or five years before that.

• 33:19Speaker 02

  Three years.

• 33:19Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 33:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:20Speaker 01

  So what.

• 33:21Speaker 02

  It was the fastest growing company in the history of American business until Microsoft came along. Reebok was the fastest growing company in the history of American business.

• 33:28Speaker 01

  Because of this one shoe idea you had.

• 33:30Speaker 02

  Pretty much.

• 33:31Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 33:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was it. And we did some other shoes too, but.

• 33:35Speaker 01

  That was the most successful shoe.

• 33:36Speaker 02

  Well, it was it was what launched the company.

• 33:38Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 33:39Speaker 02

  But it was, but people don't understand, it was never about aerobics, it was never about shoes. So it was about, it was about power. You know, that idea of feeling empowered.

• 33:48Speaker 01

  Sure. Wow. Who's your most valuable mentor growing up? And what lesson was the big lesson that they taught you?

• 33:53Speaker 02

  Well, you know, my guardian, Albert O'Neil was probably the number one. Just he was, he was very, very smart. He was a very smart man, very practical. What he always said to me is, don't, don't be a fool. He always said, don't be a fool. What he meant by that was, know what you're talking about, you know, at least, uh, study things.

• 34:14Speaker 01

  Right.

• 34:15Speaker 02

  Don't be taken down a path by people who don't know what they're talking about. So, and then I had, I'd say my high school coach was, was pretty important for me. Almost, he was there for me after my guardian passed away. So he was a bit of a father figure. I used to go, he used to let me go hang out at his house, have dinner over there, and you know, just kind of be around his family. I had a little crush on his daughter too, by the way, she's pretty much my age, but the point is that he, he was really a great guy in that respect.

• 34:43Speaker 01

  What's the biggest lesson you learned from him?

• 34:46Speaker 02

  Um, that you don't, you know, he was a super soft spoken guy. Like when you'd be at a track meet and you hear everything that's going on, people are yelling and.

• 34:55Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 34:55Speaker 02

  And I could always spot his voice because he'd never yell. He would just say, oh yeah, go, go Angelo. Just about like that. I could always hear his voice. Uh, but he was that kind of a person. So, you know, he, he was, he didn't need to be loud to get his point across and get people to perform. And I just watching that, I think I'm, I'm a lot, a lot that way. I don't, I don't yell at people. I don't lose it with people, never have. But I do get from people what. I need them to do.

• 35:24Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 35:24Speaker 02

  And.

• 35:25Speaker 01

  How do you do that?

• 35:27Speaker 02

  Um, try to just first of all, um, make sure they understand why. Why we're doing something. If you understand why you have to do something, then it's easier to do it.

• 35:37Speaker 01

  Right.

• 35:38Speaker 02

  If I don't understand why I'm doing something, then what I have is the military. You know, I just point to a hill, say, you know, we're going over there, all those machines, we're going.

• 35:46Speaker 01

  Right.

• 35:47Speaker 02

  Nobody says why.

• 35:48Speaker 01

  Right.

• 35:49Speaker 02

  I'd be a horribly bad, you know, soldier. Cause I would always ask, well, why are we doing that?

• 35:55Speaker 01

  Right.

• 35:56Speaker 02

  That's stupid. Or I'm not a fool. I'm gonna run over there and get shot. Isn't there a better way to do this?

• 36:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:03Speaker 02

  You know, I mean, I'd really make a terrible soldier.

• 36:08Speaker 01

  I feel like, you know, let's talk more about Reebok, because you took that company, it was the biggest shoe company in the world, or the biggest athletic shoe.

• 36:15Speaker 02

  It was bigger than, for a little while, we were the biggest athletic, uh, brand. We weren't bigger than Adidas. Adidas was globally the powerhouse.

• 36:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:23Speaker 02

  But we were bigger than Nike and we blew by them like they were standing still. It was, it was very much akin to what happens in a, in a race, you know, where you're the unknown.

• 36:32Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 36:33Speaker 02

  And the champion's out there prancing around and you just go blowing past him, a lap and he doesn't know what hit him.

• 36:38Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 36:38Speaker 02

  And that's what happened. And it was actually really fun to do that.

• 36:42Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 36:42Speaker 02

  Because Nike wasn't known for, for their humility.

• 36:47Speaker 01

  So how long were you with Reebok?

• 36:49Speaker 02

  Twenty one years.

• 36:49Speaker 01

  Twenty one years?

• 36:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:51Speaker 01

  And why, uh, why did you end up leaving? Or what, what happened?

• 36:55Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, uh, I was really exhausted by it all. Secondly, uh, Reebok lost its way. You know, I mean, we had too many changes in direction, too many presidents that were brought in. The only reason I was there that long was I was, I was always operating in sort of the exile environment, you know, I mean, I was, I was in, in Southern California for nine years, running the Business Development Center, which I started. And then I, for five years, I ran the Rockport Company, which was forty five miles away from Reebok Corporate Headquarters, and they left me alone. And I could run my business.

• 37:32Speaker 01

  Wasn't that business going down and then they brought you in to be the?

• 37:35Speaker 02

  The Rockport.

• 37:36Speaker 01

  President? Yeah, the Rockport.

• 37:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, we doubled, I doubled it. We doubled it.

• 37:39Speaker 01

  Right.

• 37:40Speaker 02

  In, in four years, we doubled it, almost doubled it. No, we did double. And I didn't do any, you know, I mean, I didn't know anything about the quote unquote brown shoe business. I knew about, I know about shoes. I know about selling shoes. I know about that. But the making of brown shoes is very different than making athletic shoes, especially then. So that was an education for me because we had so many incredibly talented shoemakers at Rockport. We never talked about shoemakers at Reebok. Shoemakers, shoemakers were, athletic shoes, I don't know. They're, it's one, basically one construction. A lot of the shoes weren't even using leather. You were using nylon materials. So you don't get the leather craft involved, the lasser, a little more forgiving and on and on.

• 38:21Speaker 02

  So when I got to Rockport and discovered shoemaking and really learned about shoemaking and got involved in that, the, it opened up a lot of insight for me, you know? So we combined some of the marketing tactics and line building tactics from the athletic world with the celebration of the shoemaking from the Rockport world. The best of both worlds came together. We are over, you know, double the size of Rockport.

• 38:45Speaker 01

  Wow. And Stuart told me a story about you starting another company. I can't remember if it was during Reebok, but it was like a, kind of like a Fathead product.

• 38:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was Fathead before there was ever Fathead.

• 38:58Speaker 01

  Right, right. And then you sold that to M3, right?

• 39:00Speaker 02

  3M, yeah.

• 39:00Speaker 01

  3M, 3M. So why did you come up with that idea?

• 39:03Speaker 02

  Just because we wanted to decorate my son's room. And I thought it would be cool to do this border motif. So we, I did it. I drew all the, it was cars. He loved cars. So we did, the border was like a street with a center line and mailbox and stop sign, the streetlights. And then the cars, you could, they were all made from contact paper, you know, colored paper vinyl. And he could move them around, you know? So we thought that was cute. So I did that. And then it occurred to me, once I did it, that this could, this is an idea that if we had a note, an adhesive that would come off the wall, like posted, that it would work as a room decor system.

• 39:43Speaker 01

  To take, put on, take off, move around, put in different room.

• 39:46Speaker 02

  Put on your furniture.

• 39:47Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 39:48Speaker 02

  And you know, our kids like to do that. They like to do, put stuff on walls.

• 39:51Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 39:52Speaker 02

  And this, you could put it on your furniture, you put, and it was no big deal. Parents just come over, peel it off, put it where it's somewhere else. It left no residue. It was post-it notepads for the wall, basically. So I got a patent on it and then we went and I developed it with my wife. She was the president, actually. And we built it up a little bit, had a group that we hired to help us manage it. And then we sold it to 3M.

• 40:16Speaker 01

  Which is, they own Scotch tape and everything, right?

• 40:18Speaker 02

  They invented post-it.

• 40:19Speaker 01

  Post-it notes.

• 40:20Speaker 02

  So I had a, they, they, they didn't have, this is crazy. I think this is where they realized, oh, because I named it, the, the company was called Decorated.

• 40:28Speaker 01

  Ah, nice.

• 40:30Speaker 02

  And they didn't know that, they didn't realize their, their trademark protection didn't extend to anything besides post-it. So I just said to them, you know, sorry, you didn't have that protected, but I went and got it. So they ended up kind of being a little bit impressed by that. That little guy comes along. It was a thirteen billion dollar company at the time.

• 40:49Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 40:50Speaker 02

  And so then we ended up striking a deal and they, they, they bought the brand. And it is now, that same technology is now Fathead.

• 40:58Speaker 01

  No way.

• 40:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:59Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 41:00Speaker 02

  So I suspect that Fathead is probably the same patent. The patent expired now.

• 41:04Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 41:05Speaker 02

  But I, I, the, the Fathead patent is my patent. It, I don't even think Fathead has a patent anymore. My patent was Fathead. Cause we had also done, I licensed NFL, we had licensed Disney, you know, we had licensed NASCAR. I had all those, those were all.

• 41:24Speaker 01

  Same thing as Fathead.

• 41:24Speaker 02

  Decorated.

• 41:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:25Speaker 02

  Yeah. And, and yeah, I had all the NFL team helmets that you could use in a room. And then the border was a gridiron.

• 41:33Speaker 01

  Wow, that's cool. What, what year was this?

• 41:36Speaker 02

  So Adrian, my oldest, he was, so I was eighty-six, eighty-seven.

• 41:42Speaker 01

  Hmm, okay. That's cool. So, let's talk about challenges and crises. Uh, I think that every big leader goes through lots of different challenges because they have to overcome them in order to stand out from the crowd. What are some big challenges or things that you've gone through, either personally or in business, that really kind of shaped who you are as a person?

• 42:04Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, there's always a challenge if, if, uh, if you don't see yourself as a conventional person, or in other words, you don't really wanna march down the same path as other people do in a lockstep fashion, then you're, you're making, you're making it harder on yourself.

• 42:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:22Speaker 02

  So that's a challenge, you know? And I didn't willingly wanna make it harder on myself, but I was also unwilling to, to go down that lockstep path. So, uh, you know, it, it just created, there were more hills to climb.

• 42:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:36Speaker 02

  But I was a good hill runner, you know, so, uh, the hills didn't bother me.

• 42:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:41Speaker 02

  And, uh, but that was an issue. You know, then the other issue was just the idea of, of, of just being able to project yourself into, into a future that you had no reference point for, you know? So like, if you grew up in a, a well-to-do, middle-class, solidly middle-class family, where every few years you get in a car, you know, you live in a nice house, you take a nice vacation every once in a while, I'm not talking about anything exotic, I'm talking about the middle-class arcadream, right?

• 43:09Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 43:10Speaker 02

  For me, growing up, that was absolute fantasy land. That was, that was something I saw on TV, you know? I saw that on Leave It To Beaver.

• 43:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:19Speaker 02

  And, uh, that was like, those house, that house on TV was the nicest, it was like a palace to me. So to, it's a challenge to actually convince yourself that you belong there too.

• 43:32Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 43:33Speaker 02

  That, that, why, how come, what's keeping you from projecting yourself into that? So I came up with something that years and years ago, when I was a kid, I'll never forget this either, because I was playing with a telescope, you know, and, and I looked at, and I realized, like kids all do, you look through both ends, and you say, wow, this looks totally different. When I turned the telescope around, it's totally different.

• 43:53Speaker 01

  Right.

• 43:54Speaker 02

  And, um, you know, and I, I remember, we would make a joke about somebody not knowing which end of the telescope to look through, you know? And my guardian would actually say that. And one, one of the things that, uh, I've always said is, you know, you, you should look through the other end of the telescope.

• 44:10Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 44:11Speaker 02

  And by that, I mean, you know, you just might be looking at your life through the wrong end of the telescope. You might, to you, in that view, things might seem very, very far away.

• 44:20Speaker 02

  But if you just turn it around, you realize that's not true, you know, so. So what I, what I really sort of came to was this idea that. It's easier to come from a place and go to a place. And by that, I mean, to give you an example, when I was a kid. The school record in the mile in high school was four twenty-two. Uh, and broken by a very talented runner in nineteen sixty-seven, so it wasn't really that long before. But it was considered a record that wouldn't be broken. Sure. Good back then, we, we didn't have a track. And the tracks we ran on. Cinder track, right? No, we didn't have a track. Wow. We used to run around the goalposts at the football. On grass. Yeah. And, uh, so, and every track we went to compete on was a cinder track.

• 45:06Speaker 02

  Maybe those were the good tracks. Most of them were dirt tracks with rocks on them. And rutted in the, in the, in the fast lane. So they weren't conducive to running fast. So a four twenty-two was considered, wow, you know, that's really a fast time. Uh, then there was Jim Ryan, who was a god. That was a whole nother thing, but. Uh, you know, so I remember thinking to myself, I wonder what this guy. Does every morning that I don't do. I wonder where he eats. I wonder how much he sleeps. I wonder. You know, and so then I started, as I got more into running, I started observing, you know. All these other really good runners that were not high school runners, they were older.

• 45:48Speaker 02

  And I said, what, why, why can't I be that guy? So why don't I just decide I am that guy? I'll, I'll immediately overnight become that guy. And then I'll just project back on where I am from there. So in other words, let's say that you. Want to be, and my goal at the time was also to break nine minutes for two miles in high school. Which was really super fast. So then I said, well, what would a nine-minute two-miler, how do they train? You know, what do they eat? How do they behave? You know, how do they act? What, what, how do they view life? Right. And so I decided I'm already a nine-minute two-miler. I just haven't run nine minutes yet, but I'm a nine-minute two-mile. And I just started looking at it that way. And you know, you become what you what you envision yourself being.

• 46:32Speaker 01

  Right.

• 46:33Speaker 02

  And that's that's been the way that I've always managed my my whole life since then. Reebok, it wasn't to me a surprise that we went blowing past Nike. I thought we were better than Nike.

• 46:43Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 46:44Speaker 02

  We just hadn't done it yet, you know. Deckers, I I thought this was this building that we're in, I I knew this, I saw this. I didn't come to Deckers because I wanted to stay in this funky place we were at. I had a bigger, I was already in the other end of the telescope for this company.

• 47:00Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 47:01Speaker 02

  My, I saw this as a multi-billion dollar company because of the quality of the people and the products and the brands.

• 47:07Speaker 01

  You came in when it was around a few hundred million.

• 47:09Speaker 02

  Two hundred million.

• 47:09Speaker 01

  Two hundred million, that's one point four.

• 47:11Speaker 02

  One point six.

• 47:11Speaker 01

  One point six. I think Forbes has it wrong right now.

• 47:14Speaker 02

  That was last year.

• 47:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:17Speaker 02

  That was two years ago.

• 47:18Speaker 01

  So you've been here for six or seven years now?

• 47:20Speaker 02

  No, I've been here nine years.

• 47:21Speaker 01

  Nine years. So from, yeah, that's pretty good. Growing over a billion.

• 47:26Speaker 02

  Billion.

• 47:27Speaker 01

  Billion four.

• 47:27Speaker 02

  Billion four.

• 47:29Speaker 01

  That's pretty good. That's not bad. Wall Street must love you.

• 47:32Speaker 02

  No, it's only them. The Wall Street doesn't love anybody. They love Wall Street. That's all they do.

• 47:38Speaker 01

  Right, right, right. For those listening, we're sitting in a brand new, you know, space, huge, uh, I don't know what you call this place, uh, foundation or headquarters that used to be on the other side of Santa Barbara, but it's this beautiful space right now. So, congrats, it's amazing here. What about, you know, I know you've been through through some personal, you know, some really hard personal experiences with family. And what I'm curious is, how does a great leader continue to have a huge vision and be successful when they go through an emotional experience or, you know, extremely, you know, emotional experiences, the one that you had?

• 48:20Speaker 01

  And how does someone, how does someone continue being a positive force in the world, being of service, you know, giving back the way you do? And, uh, you know?

• 48:30Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, it's, first of all, my, it was my son, what you're referring to is my son passing away, our oldest, and, um, Adrian was a wonderful, a wonderful person. He was, people talk about, oh, he's an old soul. This kid, I distinctly had the feeling that he was, he was my dad in a previous life or something. Even when he was a little, a little tyke. And he was just one of those people that everyone was attracted to. He never said a bad thing about anybody. I never, ever, ever remember him. Wow. He never lied, not once, not once, you know, ever. Which isn't, little white lies from little kids you hear all the time, never, not once.

• 49:14Speaker 02

  Just one of those, he was a beautiful person. And, you know, when this happened, I mean, I think we realized that, that what we really need to do was to honor him and everything he was about and everything he stood for, for the rest of our lives. Because he was an example for us and everyone he met, for how to live your life and how to be in the world. And so we became, as a family, I think, even more focused on, on living a quality life like he did. And so, because it was, it was never about him, you know, see, that thing about him.

• 49:58Speaker 02

  Adrian was the type of person that had a gift for math. He was a gifted math mind. And so he never had to study, graduate from the Williams College, he had a math degree. He'd just graduated. And he, he never needed to study math, ever. People would be shocked that he would, you know, these are high level math courses and he would just show up, take the test, get an A and walk out. So what would he do in all the time he wasn't studying? He would go around the, to all of his math major friends and help them with their work. Until they understood or they got it. Or if somebody was really stressed out, he'd take them bowling or he'd take them to go find a burrito somewhere. No consideration for anything other than...

• 50:45Speaker 02

  Trying to help somebody who needed help.

• 50:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:48Speaker 02

  And uh, but that's the kind of person he was, you know, so we really became much more aware of that. We gotta look through that end of his telescope, you know? And really kind of understand uh, that it's not about us, it's not about me. This is not about, Deckers is about all of these people that work here and all the people that work for the company around the world, having the kind of opportunity that I had.

• 51:14Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 51:15Speaker 02

  You know, to live a life that maybe is outside of your expectations or your, or your practical reality, or your, your, you know, you can dream about it, but you don't have the vehicle.

• 51:26Speaker 01

  Right.

• 51:27Speaker 02

  And here's the vehicle. And I, I really feel that that reflects itself in the products we make and, and how much success we have because we're not, I don't believe we're a greedy organization. You know, I think in my mind greed is probably the single thing biggest problem we have as a society and a culture is that this infusion of greed in just about every aspect of life, particularly in, in how we operate our business and how we operate our government.

• 51:57Speaker 01

  Right.

• 51:58Speaker 02

  And I think I, I, I'm pretty proud of the fact, we're not a greedy organization.

• 52:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:03Speaker 02

  We're here to, yes, we're here to serve our consumers, number one. Then we're here to serve our employees because without the great employees, we can't serve our consumers. Then we're here to serve our shareholders, number three. Because without great employees and great consumers, we won't have any shareholders.

• 52:20Speaker 01

  Right.

• 52:20Speaker 02

  It's pretty logical. And I've, I've had pushback from people telling me, well, you know, you should have shareholders' interests first. No, I, I'm sorry, I vehemently disagree with that. You know, shareholder interest comes third, behind the other two, which are more important. So if you have happy consumers who love everything you do.

• 52:39Speaker 01

  Right.

• 52:39Speaker 02

  Shareholders are gonna be happy. If you have great employees who can deliver against what consumers need, shareholders are gonna be happy.

• 52:45Speaker 01

  Right.

• 52:46Speaker 02

  If you have happy shareholders first, you may not have the other two.

• 52:49Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah, interesting.

• 52:52Speaker 02

  I can make a lot of decisions that would make shareholders very, very happy in the short term. But destroy this company in the longer term.

• 53:00Speaker 01

  Sure. So what's the biggest challenge as a leader to stay at the top? When you, everything you touch seems to, you know, double, triple, quadruple. How do you stay, how do you not stay comfortable? Or how do you not get in this comfort zone? Where that allows you to continue to grow with each thing that you get into?

• 53:22Speaker 02

  Because it's, the process is, is what's important. It's not the product. It's, it's not the, the end. How do you know that you're at the end game of anything? You know, the, the whole idea is, in my mind is, just have a, a good process for living your life. Just live your life, you know? Do this, learn, and do things that are consistent with what you've learned. And strive to do them better all the time, every day. Until you can't walk around until you're done, you know? And you should make progress every day against increasingly clear goals. That may in the beginning be about economic realities. You want to buy a house, you want to buy a car, you want to take a vacation, you want to educate your kids.

• 54:08Speaker 02

  But over time, if you keep going down that path, it come about things that are bigger than you. You've already, you've handled some of those things.

• 54:15Speaker 01

  Basic needs.

• 54:15Speaker 02

  Or you've put them in some perspective.

• 54:17Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 54:18Speaker 02

  And now you're on to what do other people need? And then the more you give away, the more you get back, which is the crazy thing. That's the craziest thing of all.

• 54:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. And you're a big believer in giving back in the community. I think you have a program with all of your employees, right? You match up to a thousand dollars.

• 54:33Speaker 02

  Couple thousand.

• 54:33Speaker 01

  Couple thousand dollars, the company will match to any of their charity that they want to. That's inspiring. Why do you do that?

• 54:40Speaker 02

  Why not?

• 54:43Speaker 02

  It's the right thing to do. People, because I want to inspire in people this idea that the more you give, the more you're gonna get back. You know, so we have, the other thing we do is we have a competition among all of our departments for who's gonna donate the most number of hours to charities in a year. So like two years ago, we were, the, the, three years ago, I think it was, the total number of hours that our employees donated to local charities was forty-five hundred hours. I think last year it was over ten thousand. And I, I require all of the people on the executive leadership team to be on a

• 55:19Speaker 01

  Advisory board, right?

• 55:20Speaker 02

  A local charitable board, if they can, you know, because they have a lot to offer and these boards need them.

• 55:26Speaker 01

  Right.

• 55:27Speaker 02

  So we try to do that, you know.

• 55:29Speaker 01

  When did you first learn this lesson of the more you give, the more you get back? Did that just come to you one day, or did you, someone teach you that, or did you experience it?

• 55:38Speaker 02

  You know, we all are taught this when we're growing up, whatever religion you're in, or whatever, you know, you're sort of, you see movies and the fables and the this and the that. And yet we, we sort of turn a blind eye to it.

• 55:52Speaker 01

  Right.

• 55:52Speaker 02

  For whatever reason, because I think we get greedy. Because we want it for ourselves, right?

• 55:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:57Speaker 02

  It's normal.

• 55:58Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 55:59Speaker 02

  But I don't know what happened. I think, I think it happened when I was reflecting on the fact that when I was a little, when I was a kid and we didn't have anything and we had to have, you know, I, I was a kid, I was a little kid, so I was a, what could I do?

• 56:15Speaker 01

  Right.

• 56:15Speaker 02

  So we needed food stamps and we needed, in New York City, they used to give away these big cheese blocks and these giant tins of peanut butter. And you went and got in line for those things. And you know what? We needed that.

• 56:29Speaker 01

  Right.

• 56:30Speaker 02

  And, and I remember as a kid saying, you know, I hate this. I hate that we have to take this. And I remember saying to myself very clearly, I'm gonna pay this back someday. So, you know, I pay a lot of taxes, so I paid it back many times. But, but, but the thing that really distressed me a little bit is when people say that, that all of these people are freeloaded on the system and that they're takers, and that they're the makers, and then there are the takers. Well, what about the givers? Where are they in the mix? Let's just stop talking about that and start saying, well, why not, why not have some more givers here? And you won't have to worry about takers, and the makers will make more, you know?

• 57:15Speaker 02

  So it's just a ridiculous conversation. So I'm, I've become very adamant about, it's almost militant about that.

• 57:24Speaker 01

  So what do you recommend for people who are listening, maybe who are, you know, have a job or entrepreneurs? That either they're just getting by, or maybe they're making a decent salary to, you know, have a vacation every year or something like that, or maybe they got a little extra cash. What do you recommend and how to give? Is it through time? Is it through donations? Is it through?

• 57:44Speaker 02

  You know, most people have time. Time is, is the most precious commodity if you're, if you're, you know, running a charity. You need, you need help.

• 57:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:55Speaker 02

  You need people to volunteer their time, whether it's a Boys and Girls Club where you can co-coach basketball, or take kids out on a field trip to the Natural History Museum, or, you know, you can, you can have a cooking class for the kids. You know, kids need that. And a lot of the problem you have in so many communities is that you have parents who have to work two or three jobs just to put food on the table. So what happens to kids? The kids are left on their own to wander around the neighborhood, get influenced by all kinds of people, do all kinds of stuff they shouldn't be doing. And, you know, a few adults every once in a while just say, hey, I care about you.

• 58:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:32Speaker 02

  How'd you like to cook spaghetti?

• 58:34Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 58:35Speaker 02

  You know?

• 58:35Speaker 01

  It'd be great. It does a lot for kids.

• 58:36Speaker 02

  It's all that, it, it isn't about what you're doing with them, it's that you're doing something with them.

• 58:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:42Speaker 02

  And, you know, that, that's what's important. So time, people say, well, I don't have any money, I can't give. Well, actually, do you have, how about two hours a week? You, you split away two hours a week watching some stupid thing on TV.

• 58:54Speaker 01

  Right.

• 58:55Speaker 02

  You can always DVR that.

• 58:57Speaker 01

  Right.

• 58:57Speaker 02

  And, you know, go. I'm not trying to be holier than thou, and I'm just saying that people need to think about it a little differently, and we all need to become more givers, not just takers and makers.

• 59:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, I like that.

• 59:10Speaker 02

  It's really important.

• 59:12Speaker 01

  I like that. Couple of questions left for you. Um, I feel like every big leader has blind spots, you know? Steve Jobs is an amazing leader, Martin Luther King, amazing leaders, but they all have their own blind spots, their own weaknesses. What do you feel like some of your blind spots are, or maybe some of your weaknesses that you may have?

• 59:32Speaker 02

  Um, I tend to be a little impatient, you know? I tend to be sometimes a lot impatient. I'm not impatient as much with people as I am with motivations, you know? In other words, I, I do like to know why someone is how they are, why they're doing something. And then, then you can have a conversation about what they're doing, you know? First, understand why. There's this great book that this guy named Simon Sinek.

• 59:59Speaker 01

  I just had him on the podcast.

• 1:00:00Speaker 02

  Okay, he's great. You know, I mean, that idea of start with why is a, is a big idea.

• 1:00:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:05Speaker 02

  And I, I, I, I kind of wish, you know, that I had written that book. And many people, because I've always thought that way. I've always thought that way. He has the insight to write that book was fantastic. I've circulated it all over the, this company.

• 1:00:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. I was gonna bring you leaders of your last, but then.

• 1:00:20Speaker 02

  I just got that.

• 1:00:21Speaker 01

  Stuart told me you gave it away.

• 1:00:22Speaker 02

  I did that to everybody.

• 1:00:23Speaker 01

  That's why I didn't bring it.

• 1:00:25Speaker 02

  So, you know, to me, um, I, I, I get, I get very impatient with people who I feel have the wrong motivations.

• 1:00:33Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:00:34Speaker 02

  If you're here for yourself, I don't want you here.

• 1:00:37Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:00:38Speaker 02

  I, you know, we kind of refer to it as my no shithead rule, you know? To be coarse. Can't help it, there's a certain coarseness that comes from a Bronx that I can't seem to.

• 1:00:48Speaker 01

  It's okay.

• 1:00:48Speaker 02

  But, but it is true, you know? There are people, and what I mean by that is there are people who are selfish, there are people who are greedy. There are people who are obstinate. And don't want to acknowledge another point of view. And those people can't work here. They just can't. And I have an obligation to not allow them to. It's, this is also a place where if you've had that in your background and you're looking to change and have a different. Then we welcome you with open arms, come on in and be part of our tribe.

• 1:01:16Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 1:01:17Speaker 02

  And because what we're trying to do is something that is a little bit different from the standard corporate motif that has emerged over the last twenty years. And, and I'm a big believer that we have every right to do that as a company, public company or not.

• 1:01:33Speaker 02

  Because it's allowing us to attract the right kind of people. And those people create the best kind of products and the best kind of brands and best kind of marketing and on and on. Because they like what they're doing. And they appreciate doing it where they're doing it and why they're doing it.

• 1:01:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:49Speaker 02

  And so all these things we do as a company to enhance the community and to provide educational opportunities for employees and to, you know, this facility, this campus, we have a little health club, we got a great cafeteria, we got a, we'll soon have a third of a mile jogging path over there, we got a soccer field and two basketball courts, all that. Well, why do we do that? So that you're free then to appreciate what you've got and work hard to protect it.

• 1:02:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So how do you, how do you empower and inspire other people in your company or around you to step into their own greatness or become great leaders themselves for, you know, their departments or their lives, their families?

• 1:02:30Speaker 02

  Well, I, what we try to do, and I don't know, this is always very difficult. Is first things first, you got to eliminate the fear component. Because the biggest step that people have to overcome is fear, right? Uh, most people are afraid to try something. They're afraid of, I don't know what they're afraid of, you know, they could be afraid of the consequences, they could be afraid of failure. You could be afraid of not being seen as capable or competent. They could be afraid to make that presentation because they don't speak well.

• 1:02:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:59Speaker 02

  Or they're afraid to speak in public and, you know, on and on and on. We all have all these fears and, um, what we try to do, and we, I, I try to do it, you know, and every way I can, is try to eliminate fear from the mix. I can't live a person's life for them, I can't get in their head. But we try to create an environment where, you know, somebody could actually. Work here in a in a fearless way, which is better for everybody.

• 1:03:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:29Speaker 02

  You know, so in in corporate environments, the bigger they get, the more fear tends to infuse itself. And then people use fear as a control mechanism, you know, they use it as as as a weapon. And then fear becomes wrapped up in power. And so then power uses fear as a as a key element of its of the weapon.

• 1:03:51Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 1:03:51Speaker 02

  And and I find that to be incredibly destructive, you know. So, uh, you know, anybody can walk into my office anytime we talk about anything. I'm I walk around the bit, I'm a I'm an introvert, so I tend not to. I've never been the backslapping guy.

• 1:04:10Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:04:11Speaker 02

  But that doesn't mean I don't want to talk to you, I just, that's not me, you know.

• 1:04:14Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:04:15Speaker 02

  And I love that, I love it to be around people who do that.

• 1:04:19Speaker 02

  That's why they make tequila, I guess.

• 1:04:23Speaker 02

  But the point is that I I really feel that we can create an environment where where people can be themselves. And then we can harness the collective genius of the organization that we can do anything we want.

• 1:04:36Speaker 01

  So what's your biggest fear then?

• 1:04:38Speaker 02

  Well, I don't have any fears, to tell you the truth, and the worst thing could ever happen to me has happened.

• 1:04:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:43Speaker 02

  My son passed away, I I uh, I don't, I really must tell you, I don't fear anything.

• 1:04:49Speaker 01

  Must be nice.

• 1:04:50Speaker 02

  You you you know, you arrive to this place through pain and suffering.

• 1:04:54Speaker 01

  Sure, you've had, you've gone through a lot of fear.

• 1:04:56Speaker 02

  Well, you, when I, yeah, all the, all the things you go through, you're still here.

• 1:05:00Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:05:00Speaker 02

  So what's there to be afraid of?

• 1:05:02Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:05:02Speaker 02

  What what I don't, I really don't, I don't have, uh, I don't have any.

• 1:05:06Speaker 01

  So what's your big vision for the rest of your life? What do you want to see in the world?

• 1:05:11Speaker 02

  I want to see some some grandkids, that'd be good.

• 1:05:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:16Speaker 02

  You know, I want this to be a leadership company in not just our industry, and I believe we already are in our industry, but I want it to be a leadership company that people aspire to work for and respect because of who we are, and they respect our products around the world. That's, I don't know how big that is. It doesn't even matter how big in terms of revenue it is. But if it's a leadership company, it's well-respected, then it will create opportunities for that many more people.

• 1:05:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:47Speaker 02

  You know, and someday I'd like to be able to do business in Cuba, which would be a wonderful thing because this absurd anachronism called the embargo is keeping 11 million people from pursuing their passions the way that everyone else in the world should be able to do. And it exists for no apparent reason. I'll get up, that's my one political soapbox.

• 1:06:08Speaker 01

  Oh, you're fine.

• 1:06:09Speaker 02

  This thing has to end. It's a heart and soul destroying. And it makes us lesser as a people for continuing it. This is not American to do this to a country like that for no apparent reason anymore.

• 1:06:24Speaker 01

  Right, right. So was that part of your vision then, that you want to be supporting?

• 1:06:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, I would love to make shoes in Cuba. And why not? You know, it's a, it's a great, 90 miles off the coast. We could make footwear there. We could make it there easier than we make it in China or Vietnam or El Salvador. We make shoes in LA. We make over a million pairs of shoes in LA.

• 1:06:44Speaker 01

  I heard, yeah.

• 1:06:45Speaker 02

  You know, so we'll make shoes all over the world, but a shoe factory puts a lot of people to work, gives them self-respect, gives them pride.

• 1:06:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:54Speaker 02

  You know, they could, that's the first step toward, you know, leading a positive life.

• 1:07:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, nice. Well, final question, that's what I ask all my guests, and it's what is your definition of greatness?

• 1:07:07Speaker 02

  Well, just being there for other people. That's uh, that to me is greatness. Living a life that's other oriented is greatness. When you arrive to that point, you can start to see some great things happening. And uh, great things come your way. And then you get to rub greatness all over yourself. Doesn't mean you're great, but you get to rub some greatness on you.

• 1:07:27Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:07:29Speaker 02

  But if you, if you don't do that, I have a hard time seeing how greatness would ever come your way.

• 1:07:34Speaker 01

  Right, right. Awesome. Well, I appreciate it. If there's uh, anywhere you'd like to send people online, I know they can check out all the brands at deckers.com. If there's anything else that you'd want to send them, feel free to, to let them know or if you have a Twitter, are you on the Twitter? Are you on Twitter?

• 1:07:52Speaker 02

  I don't, I don't, no.

• 1:07:54Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:07:54Speaker 02

  I'm not a, I'm not a tweeter.

• 1:07:57Speaker 02

  Well, thank you. Really appreciate it.

• 1:07:59Speaker 01

  Appreciate it. Thank you.

• 1:08:07Lewis Howes?

  Thank you guys again for joining me on today's episode. If you enjoyed this, please go head back to the show notes at lewishouse.com/124. And make sure to share this with your friends online over on Twitter and Facebook and Google Plus. Also tag a picture where you're listening to this episode over on Instagram, at Lewis Howes over there. And at hashtag School of Greatness. I hope you guys enjoyed this. We had a lot of fun doing this together and uh, I'm very excited to thank you guys again for all you do. We've got some other amazing interviews coming up soon. So make sure to subscribe over at iTunes.com/SchoolOfGreatness. Again, thank you guys so much for joining and thanks to Anil for sharing his wisdom of all the success he's created over the years as the CEO of Deckers.

• 1:08:51Lewis Howes?

  And you guys know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.