First Time Founders with Ed Elson – This Founder Hit $100M in Revenue Without Raising a Dollar

Ed speaks with Missy Park, Founder and CEO of Title Nine, a women’s athleisure brand. They discuss how her experience as a collegiate athlete led her to start her company, the benefits and drawbacks of bootstrapping, and why achieving a work life/balance is not all it’s cracked up to be. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

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• 1:00Ed Elson?

  Scott, you often talk about how you never want to raise venture capital again. And you've talked about that with this company. You don't want to raise a penny of outside funding. Why is that?

• 1:11Scott Galloway?

  Being a fiduciary means that I'm going to think about your money as much or more than mine. Two nights ago, I decided that you're all going to Ibiza on me. And when I say all of you, I mean everyone at Prof G. If I take an outside capital, I'd have to think, well, is really that the best use of capital? So it gives you a level of freedom. If Prof G works or doesn't work, it's not going to have a big impact on my life. But when you take other people's money, you have a responsibility to have sleepless nights thinking about, you know, is their investment going up or down? The biggest sources of stress in my life, and granted, I've led a charm life so far, have usually been, at least professionally, concerns around losing other people's money.

• 1:54Scott Galloway?

  And so, control is an addictive substance. It's really nice to have total control when you don't have any outside investors. And B, I just don't want to be responsible for other people's capital anymore.

• 2:10Ed Elson?

  Welcome to First Time Founders. In 1972, Congress passed a piece of legislation that banned schools from discriminating on the basis of sex. That bill, known as Title IX, had many impacts. Before Title IX, only 1 in 27 girls played sports. Today, that number is 2 in 5. As a college athlete in the 80s, my next guest was one of the first to benefit from Title IX. But she also benefited as an entrepreneur. Female athletes represented a new market, she recognized that early, and in 1989, she sent out 13,000 mail-order catalogs for a new clothing category known as women's activewear. Since then, the category, which she defined, has exploded with thousands of new entrants

• 2:55Ed Elson?

  from Luda Lemon to ALO to Athleta. But despite all that competition, she's protected her company and grown it into a $100 million per year business with over 300 employees. Plus, she did it all without ever raising a penny of outside funding. Yes, you heard that right. This founder owns 100% of her company. She bootstrapped it the whole way. This is my conversation with Missy Park, founder and CEO of Title IX.

• 3:27Ed Elson?

  How are you doing?

• 3:27Speaker 05

  No complaints. What about yourself?

• 3:29Ed Elson?

  I'm doing very well. It's nice and sunny here in New York. You're in Berkeley?

• 3:34Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 3:34Ed Elson?

  When did you move to Berkeley, by the way?

• 3:36Speaker 05

  I was just thinking about that. Let's see, I think I moved here in 1987.

• 3:43Ed Elson?

  So that was before you started the company, then?

• 3:44Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I worked for a couple of years on the East Coast after college, and then it was too cold.

• 3:52Ed Elson?

  But you went to college on the East Coast, right? You went to Yale, I believe. How'd you like that?

• 3:57Speaker 05

  Well, it's like most things, it was hard but good. You know, I think coming from a small town in Greenville, South Carolina to...

• 4:10Speaker 05

  A really, quite frankly, ugly city. New Haven, Connecticut. Um, and, and really all that that entailed, that was a, a big culture shock. Um, that, you know, not just sort of the physical environment, but, but the people, um, everything. It was a big culture shock, but I wouldn't have had it any other way.

• 4:34Ed Elson?

  And you were an athlete in college, right?

• 4:36Speaker 05

  Uh, yeah, I was, you know, I came up all the way, I was a first, actually in the first class of women who came up all the way, um, through high school and college with Title IX being in effect.

• 4:50Ed Elson?

  Give us a little explanation of what Title IX is. I think most people probably know now, but some might not.

• 4:55Speaker 05

  Most people do not know.

• 4:56Ed Elson?

  Is that right?

• 4:57Speaker 05

  And actually, that's awesome. They feel entitled. They think it's been this way all along, you know? So I'm good that most people don't know. Um, it meant a lot to me in my generation, probably women on, probably 15 years on either side. Uh, basically it was a piece of legislation that was passed in 1972. It said that girls and women must have an equal opportunity to compete in all interscholastic activities, athletic activities. And people thought it was about the sports, but that's kind of where they were mistaken because we were talking about the whole shooting match. So yes, it was about girls getting equal opportunity

• 5:39Speaker 05

  to compete, similar practice times, uh, similar practice facilities. That was a long time in the making. But what it was really about was equal opportunity to an education. And so that means, you know, uh, in the 1970s, probably one in every 50 professional school attendees was a female. Now it's 50%. So it wasn't just about athletics. It was about law school, med school, business school, um, all of them. Advanced degrees and that that's where Tideland really made the difference.

• 6:15Ed Elson?

  Let's dive into the company a little bit. I mean, you started the company in 1989. It was one of the very first American sportswear brands that was made exclusively for women. I think today that sounds pretty normal to us. I mean, there are a lot of female focused brands in all sorts of consumer products, but at that time, you know, 30 years ago, I assume it wasn't. So why did you decide to start this company?

• 6:43Speaker 05

  I graduated from college and really could not find, you know, when you're in college, you basically get all your gear given to you for free. I mean, it's bad gear. It's it's men's gear, but at least we had stuff. And then when I graduated from college, I realized like, wow, there is no one out here, literally no one. We were before Nike or Nike Woman or Dick's or Dick's for Her, certainly before Athleta, Lululemon. I mean, we were really the only one doing it. And when I told my dad my idea, I said, you know, the great thing is, Dad, we're the we're we're going to be the only ones doing this. My dad's like, well, there might be a good reason for that.

• 7:21Speaker 05

  Ever the encouraging one.

• 7:27Speaker 05

  So yeah, it was a very different time. And really, as I said before, I was in that first cohort of women that could have gone all the way through high school and all the way through college playing sports. And then in that first cohort of women who wanted to make the thing they love part of their vocation and not just have it be an avocation.

• 7:46Ed Elson?

  And was the idea that you wanted to sell clothes to female athletes in college or just?

• 7:52Speaker 05

  Oh, what it was for was for 27 year old former collegiate basketball players.

• 7:59Ed Elson?

  For you.

• 8:03Speaker 05

  You got it. Exactly. Um, you know, I mean, obviously for good and ill, I didn't have a business plan. I basically bootstrap the whole way. There are good and bad things about that. One of the bad things, and maybe the good thing too, is my ideas did not go through the rock Tumblr of vetting that happens when you raise money and build a business plan. So no one pointed out some of the very obvious problems with targeting a company to a very, very small subset of women. But the good news is I, you know, we didn't spend much money. When I say we, that would be the royal we, that would be just me.

• 8:48Speaker 05

  And, you know, I had, I don't know, 25,000 bucks. I talked our suppliers into shipping us stuff and, and invoicing us after we sold it, which turned out to be optimistic. Even that was optimistic. But the good news was I could get the stuff out there and start to learn very, very quickly. You know, so I had like a little catalog. And at the very last minute, I put in a black and white section, sports bras. And, I mean, you know, we sold, I don't know, I can't even remember, like maybe 20,000 catalogs. We probably got like 13 orders and of the 13 orders, I think 11 of them had a sports bra on it.

• 9:29Speaker 05

  So I don't know that pitching what was typically the investment community at that point would have helped me figure out that sports bras were the thing because it'd be a lot of people that don't look like me. So in the end, it would have been nice to have the rock Tumblr of the vetting that goes on with a capital raise, but on the other hand, you're only as good as the people you're sitting in front of, and I'm not sure anybody really knows. So to be able to do it relatively cheaply, realize like, wow, sports bras, running shoes, running shorts, those were the things that came across.

• 10:02Ed Elson?

  Yeah, that's what I was gonna ask. I mean, a third of sales include a sports bra on the order. My next question was gonna be, could you just not get a sports bra anywhere else? It sounds like the answer is yes.

• 10:12Speaker 05

  Correct. I mean, women are problem solvers, right? And so people come up with ways to do it. They wear three regular bras, they use ace bandages. The original sports bra was actually. Two jock straps, which you don't even know what a jock strap is.

• 10:30Speaker 05

  But you could probably imagine.

• 10:34Speaker 05

  But you know, it's like, oh, well, men need support and women need support. So why don't we just take the thing that men need support for and apply it to women? It didn't really work that way, but that was um the initial. I mean, women got pretty inventive about um how we solve those those problems. But but now, I mean, that that is old news.

• 10:54Ed Elson?

  Had you had any professional experience in in retail or in apparel or sports wear? What was your what was your background before deciding to do this?

• 11:03Speaker 05

  Well, you know, I probably worked a little bit of retail, you know? I worked, I played tennis in high school, a little bit in college. I worked at the local tennis shop, but no, no. I I mean, probably the most relevant experience I had is obviously the experience of of a participant and the passion of a participant. And you can say that cuts both ways. And then after that was really, I had two jobs when I moved out to California. I worked for Fisher Mountain Bikes, worked for them for a year. So I got sort of a firsthand look at what a small company, how it runs. And this was a small family run business and getting to see what that looks like. And then the other great experience I had was working at The North Face um when they are

• 11:48Speaker 05

  much smaller than Title IX is now. It was, I did their first ever point of sale print catalog. And by doing it, it meant that I just ran around and worked with all the people who knew what they were doing and was responsible for, you know, hiring photographers and models, um writing the copy, uh being at the uh photo shoots.

• 12:11Ed Elson?

  And that's probably was the main marketing channel at the time, right?

• 12:14Speaker 05

  Exactly, that was the marketing channel. And then the other piece that I had at The North Face is I ran their, what they called the warranty department, which was the department that was responsible for making good on their lifetime guarantee. So it was really a customer service department.

• 12:29Ed Elson?

  Well, it sounds like you you always kind of knew you wanted to be involved in some way in athletics, but did you always know you wanted to be an entrepreneur?

• 12:38Speaker 05

  You know, always knew. Now, I don't know that I always, like hindsight. You know, you start to mix up hindsight and memory a little bit, I think. You know, my father was an entrepreneur, although they didn't call it that at the time. He was just, he was just a bootstrapper.

• 12:54Ed Elson?

  Yeah.

• 12:55Speaker 05

  He's just a scrappy guy.

• 12:57Ed Elson?

  A guy with a business, yeah.

• 12:58Speaker 05

  Yes, yes, he was just a scrappy guy. Um, my sister's in business for herself, both my brothers are in business for themselves. I think a lot like, um, I don't think it's a requirement, but certainly like if your parents are lawyers or doctors, you're more likely, uh, perhaps, uh, to be a lawyer or a doctor. I think just living up, living in a household where business and running a business and the problems of small businesses, conversation, uh, around the dinner table. So I don't know if I always knew Ed, but I think what I would say is there was a lot in the water and in the genes.

• 13:34Ed Elson?

  So you're working at the North Face and then you decide enough of this, you want to start your own company, but you, you didn't raise any money, which I feel like most of the people I've had on this podcast and most of my friends who are entrepreneurs, that's the first thing they do. Like, okay, pitch deck, now I'm going to go out and raise money. You didn't do that. What was the first thing that you did to start building this company? The first piece of action you took?

• 13:59Speaker 05

  Well, and I think this may be relevant to people who want to bootstrap. The thing about bootstrapping, I, I mean, the most important thing is to take the first step and make a commitment. So for me, there was a psychological hurdle I had to cross. I was like, okay, am I really doing this? And for me, it was, you know, printing up business cards, you know, asking a buddy of mine, I paid her 50 bucks and she designed a logo and put together a corporate package with things that we don't use anymore, but letterhead and, you know, shipping labels and all these things, um, and, and a T-shirt and I paid her 50 bucks. That felt like a little bit of crossing the Rubicon, I suppose, you know?

• 14:43Speaker 05

  It's like, okay, I'm committed, I've, I've paid money and, and that was really the first step. And then it was just a matter of scrapping, you know? I had some, I was playing on a bunch of different sports teams. I met some people who were involved in the publishing industry. They agreed to help me out on the side with design and copy editing. My teammates were models, so they were free. I mean, everything just had to be cheap, you know? I mean, cause like, There was no cash flow, really. I mean, it wasn't like I had a pot of money in the bank that I could just work my way through. I mean, everything, you know, I had thirty thousand dollars. I needed for that to last until I got my first sale. So that that is

• 15:24Speaker 05

  one of the things I think that I don't like about the investment. You take so long to get to the first good information you really need. And that is, what does the customer think about this idea? I mean, I, I mean, and people are so good with those pitches, man. I'm just like, okay, you got your elevator speech, but I don't know if you can sell a damn thing. I mean, it's just two different things. Like, a bunch of guys, usually, who all look alike, think alike, bank at the same damn bank, are deciding what customers want. You know, I guess there is something to the fact that they have money, and that

• 16:05Speaker 05

  is legitimizing. But the most important thing is, what does the customer want? And it's, for me, that is the thing you have to get to the most quickly, is to figure out if the customer wants what you're selling. And if they don't, then how are you going to change?

• 16:19Ed Elson?

  And how long did it take you to get your first sale?

• 16:21Speaker 05

  I left the North Face in April of nineteen eighty-nine, and we had our first sale in October of nineteen eighty-nine. So, pretty quickly.

• 16:35Ed Elson?

  What did that mean to you psychologically? Was that like, yep, this is gonna work?

• 16:38Speaker 05

  Uh, it meant I was really ready to quit. That's what it meant. Because, of course, you know, I mean, because, again, I didn't go through the rock Tumblr of vetting that would normally happen. So I didn't have all of the hard knocks, right? And when you get thirteen orders, that's, I mean, that, you know, everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face. And I didn't even have a plan. I just got punched in the face. So, so for me, really, that first one, I was like, wow, I, I have no idea what I'm doing.

• 17:14Ed Elson?

  It almost sounds like a better vetting process to me. It's like, that's probably the best vetting process you could have, is you went through the struggle, and you had to go find out if there was demand, which you just did as quickly as possible, it sounds like. Now, from my understanding, the first four years for you were a struggle, just some of those struggles that I know about. You were two hundred thousand dollars in debt. There was a flood that basically destroyed your entire inventory. What were those first few years like? And was there ever a point where you truly thought, yeah, I actually do want to quit?

• 17:47Speaker 05

  Yes, and still, Ed, and still. I mean, and anybody that tells you differently, it's just, you know, I sit on these calls. We have this pitch fest that we do that has a young woman who are building outdoor brands come and pitch us. And I sit on a Zoom call every so often with them, talking about sort of whatever challenges they're facing. And one of them, we were talking about money and they're like, when do you stop stressing about money? And I was like, never, literally never. I know specifically back in those early days, there would be times when it was a question of, could I hold off paying the printer and all the other marketing things that we were doing? Before I got my first sales, not someone I said, I got my first sales.

• 18:32Speaker 05

  Could I hold off the people that actually owned the inventory? Until I got enough sales to be able to pay them. And there was a specific time, really twice a year, and that still happens about twice a year. Cash gets really, really tight. And so I would say, you know, anybody that isn't constantly paranoid about, is this the misstep that's going to doom me in? Is not being vigilant enough or they have too much money. I don't know which.

• 19:04Ed Elson?

  And then in 1993, you became profitable for the first time. Would you say that was sort of the turning point for Title IX? From a financial perspective and you're nodding yes. If so, what started going right? What did you start doing that allows you to reach that point?

• 19:22Speaker 05

  You know, I always say just like fail faster to succeed sooner. I mean, we didn't have enough failure. It took us four years of screwing things up to find the things that worked. You know, we found the right customers. It wasn't all the people, but we narrowed in on some places where we could advertise and market that really worked with us. I figured out how to manage inventory, managing cash flow, marketing. And those tricks, you know, you learn those, but you have to keep relearning them, right? I mean, like at the beginning, you have to learn all the things all at once. Once you get started. It's more like conducting a symphony, I think. It's like you get the woodwinds right and then you got to go over and work at the strings.

• 20:05Speaker 05

  And then by the time you get back around, the woodwinds are screwing up again. I mean, I think once you get it going, usually not everything screws up at once. So that's helpful.

• 20:16Scott Galloway?

  We'll be right back.

• 20:31Scott Galloway?

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• 21:48Scott Galloway?

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• 22:33Scott Galloway?

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• 22:55Scott Galloway?

  Support for the show comes from Vanta. As AI adoption grows, so does your company's security risks and requirements. New frameworks, audits, and vendors keep piling on, but your team isn't getting any bigger. Most compliance tools promise automation, but you're really stuck doing all the work by hand, chasing screenshots, validating controls, and playing catch-up when audit season comes around again. Vanta works differently. The Regentic Trust platform is built to scale with you, not slow you down. With over 1,400 automated tests across 400-plus integrations, Vanta collects evidence and monitors your controls year-round, cutting your audit prep by 82%. Plus, you can access the Vanta agent everywhere you work, whether your team is in Vanta every day or living in tools including Claude or Cursor. Want proof?

• 23:40Scott Galloway?

  Over 16,000 fast-growing companies like Ramp, Ryder, and Harvey save time and resources while scaling fast with Vanta. Learn more at vanta.com/profg and get $1,000 off. That's spelled V-A-N-T-A dot com slash profg for $1,000 off.

• 24:06Ed Elson?

  We're back with first time founders. When we last spoke, one of the things you were talking about in terms of your business strategy was this idea of base hits versus home runs. And you basically said to me and elsewhere that Title IX actually doesn't go for home runs, you try to optimize for base hits. Could you take us through your thinking there and what that means to you?

• 24:29Speaker 05

  Well, it's really hard, right? Because everybody wants the unicorn. Everybody wants the home run, right? That's those are the people that are most highly compensated is the home run hitters. We just want to stay in the game. You know, you show me anybody that's hitting a lot of home runs, I'm going to show you somebody that struck out an awful lot. And when you strike out, you're sitting in the dugout. You're not playing, you're not learning, you're not learning how to run the bases, you're not, you're learning nothing. I don't want huge failures. I want people's failures to scale with their expertise. I should be making bigger mistakes today than I did 25 years ago, but I don't want to make any game on from a six. So that's what I would say. I mean, those kinds of like, we're just gonna take, make one heap of all our winnings and

• 25:13Speaker 05

  risk it on one turn of pitch and toss. That is just not what we're doing. We're going to stay in the game, get lots of learnings, experiment a lot, fail quickly, give more resources to the things that work and let the other stuff die on the vine.

• 25:28Ed Elson?

  Yeah, which is exactly what you've done. I mean, in business for 30 years, $100 million in sales per year, 300 employees, it's incredible. Was that the game plan from the very beginning? Because it's just a very mature approach and you were, you know, a young founder at the time and the most young founders I know are just obsessed with the home run. Is that something that you you knew from the get go or did you kind of slowly learn that over time?

• 25:57Speaker 05

  Well, you know, it's funny. I mean, I remember, I can remember even conversations I had like.

• 26:03Speaker 05

  You know, I went down to the Office Depot and bought like a landline, two-line phone. And a buddy of mine who was starting a business at the same time, also an apparel business, he put in a whole phone system. You know, I mean, we were doing basically the same thing, but he was just so much more confident. He's like, you know, hiring people. And his, his first foray into it was no more successful than mine, but he was done. You know, because he'd spent all this money and so, so I'd say for me, I've always been fairly pragmatic, very optimistic. I always think it's going to work.

• 26:45Speaker 05

  Um, but I think there's a part of me that also knows, and if it doesn't work, here's my plan B, plan C, plan D. A buddy of mine, the founder of Cliff Bar, we talk every once in a while, Gary Erickson. You know, everybody's always trying to tell you the three sort of characteristics of a successful entrepreneur. Everybody's got their opinions about that.

• 27:04Ed Elson?

  So we do every week on this podcast.

• 27:07Speaker 05

  Well, and you know.

• 27:08Ed Elson?

  This is what you have to be.

• 27:09Speaker 05

  I know. And, and you know what? Gary's is actually, he's the only one who I think got it right. His thing is there are three characteristics. Never give up, never give up, never give up. And I think that's, that's just it. And so you have to put yourself in a position that someone doesn't give up for you. Successful entrepreneurs, they can be extroverts, they can be introverts. Um, they can be highly quantitative, they can be great salespeople, they can be terrible salespeople. But boy, they have got to be able to stick through it, even when they feel like quitting.

• 27:44Ed Elson?

  Just going back to base hits versus home runs. One of the things you've also said is that by taking that strategy. You're recognizing that you're never going to win a grand slam. In other words, you recognize you're not going to be the next Nike or the next Adidas, and you're okay with that, which, you know, I love. It sort of takes the stakes down a little bit in a way. But describe why you think that is a good strategy for you. Why does that make sense for you to say, okay, we're not going to be the Nike? And why do you think that would make sense for other entrepreneurs who are starting their own businesses?

• 28:22Speaker 05

  The first thing is, I think we're fairly limited when we think about the financial statements, a P and L, a cash flow, a balance sheet. Not all things that count can be counted. So I am very ambitious, but it's not counted the way venture capitalists might count that. I am very ambitious about the change I want to see in the world, the way business is done, the way women interact with business. I mean, you talk to anybody in our business, it's like, if we're doing something and we've achieved it, then I'm like, here's the next thing, here's the next thing. But they're not things that you're going to write about in the Wall Street Journal.

• 29:04Speaker 05

  They're like, are we doing a good job of developing the next generation of women executives? The next generation of women entrepreneurs? How are we helping other women get access to capital? You know, I'm not going to get rich in money by that, but I would say I'll take the richness of fulfillment. And I think just people are motivated by different things. My thing has always been about the team. You know, I play team sports. I want to play on a team where everybody is, has a sort of unanimity of purpose and that we are all made better by each other's presence and that will make our communities better. And we're going to make money.

• 29:46Speaker 05

  But damn, I mean, how much money do you need? Right? I mean, and I guess for me, that's what I would ask is, you know, these measuring sticks that we use to decide whether we're successful, if we've hit a grand slam homerun. I feel like I have hit a grand slam homerun and I think that grand slam homerun is not for other people to judge, but for me to judge.

• 30:12Ed Elson?

  Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think another way of putting this is that your your mission isn't just to maximize shareholder value, basically. It sounds like you have more missions to this company. What's interesting, though, is if you have shareholders, you must maximize shareholder value. But this is kind of the big thing, and which is why I think it's, I'm so glad to have you on. I think you're the first bootstrap company that we've had on this podcast. You own 100% of the company. You've never raised any venture funding. This is your company and yours alone. Therefore, you get to choose what to do with it, and that includes the missions that you want to pursue.

• 30:55Speaker 05

  Or running it into the ground. I mean, it could be both.

• 31:00Ed Elson?

  Or quit. Exactly. It's yours. Take us through your decision process there. Why have you never gone out and raised money?

• 31:10Speaker 05

  I would say there are two reasons. Money is kind of easy to find, honestly. Like, you've got to bring more than money to the table. If you want a share in this business, and this is sort of how we look when we make small investments in other women-led companies, I'm like, can I help them with more than just a check? Can we help them with more than just a check? So money, money by itself is just kind of dumb. And so I never really have found someone who I felt like brought money and was equally invested in sort of the business. And then the second reason is, you know, that a woman can be rich, or she can be queen,

• 31:52Speaker 05

  you know? And for me, I think I choose queen, and that is having control, because the fact is, if you want something done, if you want a decision on something, the people who are making that decision are in the building, and they're working shoulder to shoulder with you. The other thing that I like about it, and I have sat on some boards, and I see how it goes awry, is clarity of vision.

• 32:19Speaker 05

  You know, it never gets watered down. Now, could be a good thing, could be a bad thing. You know, in those first four years, I am sure if I'd had investors and they had watched our performance, they would have been like, oh my gosh, what a disaster. This is never gonna work. And, and, and that would have, as a, even a 27 year old, that would have shaken me. You know, people can get you off, off track pretty easily because you're young and you don't have that confidence. So I, I guess for me, it's like, uh, the thing about bootstrapping is the business will grow as you grow. I mean, and that's probably the third thing, that you, the business will grow as you grow.

• 33:03Speaker 05

  There are things that I am doing now with the business that there's just no way I could have figured out when I was 27 or even 37, you know? Um, so I think it, it's sort of like intelligent scaling would be that third thing, you know? You, you can't scale faster than your ability to grow it. Now, those, all three of those things, there are downsides to them. Anybody on the venture side of things would be able to blow those arguments out of the way about like how bad those things are too. But for me, I just don't know why people do it a different way, but clearly, clearly I'm in the minority.

• 33:39Ed Elson?

  Well, I don't know if you are in the minority. I think, I just think that we don't, those companies get less attention because, probably because they don't have millions of dollars funding their marketing campaigns, but.

• 33:50Speaker 05

  The marketing, like I know these guys' numbers, right? I know how much they're spending per click. I know they can't make that math work. It's just, can they raise money fast enough? And so I think there is like, yes, you want to have your head up, but on the other hand, you want to have your head down because there are a lot of people doing stupid things with money.

• 34:12Ed Elson?

  We'll be right back after the break.

• 34:23Speaker 06

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• 35:23Scott Galloway?

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• 36:34Ed Elson?

  We're back with first time founders. You have children, you had your children in the middle of running this company. How did you deal with raising a family and at the same time, building a successful business?

• 36:46Speaker 05

  Well, it's not without compromise. I mean, you can't have it all. Men in my generation came as close to having it all as anybody, but not your generation.

• 36:58Ed Elson?

  Yeah.

• 36:59Speaker 05

  And I think that's what you have to start with is that you can't have it all. You know, people talk about work life balance. I mean, that's just kind of BS. I don't believe it. If you want to do something really great, you are inherently imbalanced. You just have to dig in. But what I would say about that is that that imbalance may be, wow, I really need to dig in on my family right now. There are some things going on here where work is going to kind of drop off a little bit and family, I want to, I want to do, I want to do a really great job of caring for my parents in their last years. I just want to be really good at that.

• 37:44Speaker 05

  That takes time. You know, one of the choices I made is when we were growing to a certain point, we decided we wanted to open retail stores and all of our customers are, vast majority of our customers are on the East Coast. And I just said, you know, we're not going to open a store past the Rockies, you know, because I want to be able to fly there. If something blows up, I want to be able to get there and get back in time for dinner. Now, I gave up something, you know, I gave up world domination, you know, but I also got something. And, and there have been other times where I'm just like, wow, work is hell right now. And I'm sorry, but I'm not gonna be the best mom ever.

• 38:27Speaker 05

  And I'm gonna try not to feel bad about that. Um, any more than I feel bad when I'm not giving everything I need to give to work. Because that's just the way life is. So it's not, there's just different chapters. And I think that's the most important thing that both men and women coming up can learn is like, how you are now is how you are right now. And as long as you continue to sort of ride that seesaw of balance and that, you know, it's never sitting here, but it's also never sitting here. Or you're just kind of constantly going back and forth. And I think that's what'll allow us to clear up some of this, uh, pay gap. Is when both men and women recognize that that doesn't work.

• 39:08Speaker 05

  That kind of like unrelenting drive to one thing. I, I, I think it's great, but then in the end, I think that one thing is gonna disappoint. I think it's gonna disappoint because you gave everything for that one thing. And, and nothing is worth that.

• 39:25Ed Elson?

  There are obviously all these societal issues which make life harder for working women. But I'd love to get your take on what women can do for themselves today, right now, in spite of all of those issues that can better their careers and maybe improve their overall work trajectories.

• 39:46Speaker 05

  One of the biggest ones that I encourage everybody to do is getting comfortable acting without all the information. You know, I see it over and over again. By acting, I mean as simple as, okay, I haven't got the thought entirely thought through, but I'm still gonna lean in here and weigh in on whatever topic is being talked about. Like dudes, man, they are super comfortable talking about all the things they don't know a damn thing about. I mean, their words for it.

• 40:19Ed Elson?

  Us now.

• 40:20Speaker 05

  Man explaining, I'm just like, oh, really? You're gonna teach me how to hit a forehand? I've been playing tennis for 40 years and you've got some tips for me? Great.

• 40:30Ed Elson?

  I don't know what you're talking about.

• 40:31Speaker 05

  But the flip side is also bad. And that is waiting until you have all the data in order to act or to speak. And I would say for women, that is something we can control. You know, I work with my daughter on it, you know, it it it's so interesting talking to her. She's like, yeah, I'll have all my arguments marshaled and then and then the subject will have changed. I'm like, well, just bring it back. You can just say like, oh, that thing that we were talking about, I have one more point I wanted to add. And it's okay, people do it all the time. But again, we compare our insides with other people's outsides. They're like, oh, that thing has already moved on. Well, maybe it has, or maybe it hasn't. So for me, this is the number one thing with women.

• 41:16Speaker 05

  It's not lean in. It's sort of solving that problem of why am I not leaning in? I'm not leaning in because I don't have every bit of information I think I need in order to act. And and and sort of the corollary to that is to take small risks all the time. And then you will get better at taking the big risks. Because with risk comes reward. That that's where the compounding comes in. You know, I I I can tell you almost without exception, if I'm offering a promotion to a dude, I guess about damn time. You know, whereas women are like, ah, I don't know. Do you think I can do it?

• 41:57Speaker 05

  Because they've already thought of all the things about the job that they don't know how to do, but they don't realize, again, that's their insides. It's also everybody else's insides. I mean, for someone who's lived through probably forty years of the greatest change in women's station in life, there's still a long way to go. There's great opportunity out there, but there is no opportunity if you are not willing to. Act without all the information, take some risk and stop conflating your insides with other people's outsides. Those three things are killers.

• 42:37Ed Elson?

  Yeah, I think the reason I'm sitting in this chair on this podcast is because I was, for whatever reason, willing to say and do things without all the information and probably when I wasn't supposed to.

• 42:48Speaker 05

  That's exactly right. That's exactly right. Yeah, raise your hand. Like if somebody wants something, raise your hand. Raise your hand.

• 42:55Ed Elson?

  What piece of advice would you have given to your former self when you started the company back in 1989?

• 43:03Speaker 05

  I think I'd probably say it's a marathon, not a sprint. You know, I think that's probably it. It's a marathon, not a sprint and pace yourself accordingly. And I also know that if someone had told me that, I would have told them they were crazy. It is a damn sprint and I gotta get going right now.

• 43:26Ed Elson?

  Well, that's great. I really appreciate your time, Missy. Missy is the founder and CEO of Title IX, a women's sportswear company. Thank you so much for joining us. I really appreciate what you're doing.

• 43:38Speaker 05

  Well, thank you. And I'm looking forward to hearing more women on your podcast.

• 43:44Speaker 05

  That needs to be in there.

• 43:47Ed Elson?

  We're working on it.

• 43:48Speaker 05

  I can help you anytime.

• 43:50Ed Elson?

  Please do.

• 43:56Ed Elson?

  Our producer is Claire Miller, our associate producer is Alison Weiss, and our engineer is Benjamin Spencer. Jason Stavas and Catherine Dillon are our executive producers. Thank you for listening to First Time Founders from the Vox Media Podcast Network. Tune in tomorrow for Prof G Markets.

• 44:37Speaker 08

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• 45:08Speaker 09

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