John Corcoran: 16:57
Yeah. So that’s interesting. So it wasn’t as premium priced early on because you were concerned about, you know, if someone’s going to buy a $10 flip flop versus a $50 or $100 UGG.
Brian Smith: 17:09
Right.
John Corcoran: 17:09
Yeah. Yeah. Because I think of it now, you think of it now as it’s definitely a premium priced product.
Brian Smith: 17:15
It really is. But they’ve got they’ve got a brilliant you know when we got that whole fad thing going like you mentioned at school when all the schools across the country, you know, were just like inundating the parents. The parents are going, well, damn, my daughter should like these, you know? And you know, another one in Minneapolis would say, God damn, I got to sit in that ice rink for, you know, two hours at 40 degrees. I’m going to get a pair for myself. So, yeah, bit by bit, it just outgrew the whole surf market and the snowboarding market and it became its whole new fashion industry.
John Corcoran: 17:48
Yeah. Well at what point did you decide it was time to sell?
Brian Smith: 17:53
It was in 94, the beginning of 95. We’d just done about 15 million in sales the previous season, and we’d put out new colors and styles to all of the sales. I had about 30 sales reps all across the country, and they were all doing the regional shows and the big trade shows. It made it look like we were going to need to do $25 million in sales, you know, with all the orders we were getting. And I knew then that I, you know, I was lucky I even got to sell 15 million, right?
Because I have no financing. And I knew if they’re going to expect me to sell 25, I’m going to be out of business. The company’s going to fold because I can’t raise that sort of money. And ironically, I was going to a trade show in Atlanta, and I saw a buddy of mine who had started out, you know, in the beginning selling to surf shops, and we would see each other coming in and out of surf shops. And he had a sandal which was pink, yellow, pink, neoprene, like a flip flop.
And they were triple deckers. So he called his company Deckers Corporation, and he ended up taking a bunch of licenses on him. One of them was Teva Sandals. And the outdoor market really took off in the early 90s, and he went with it with his company. He went from like 16 million to 60 million.
And on top of the six, 0 million, he went and took the company public. So I’d been watching him do that, and I saw him in the baggage claim at Atlanta airport, and I’m going, oh my God, he’s sitting on about $30 million in cash, and his business dies every winter and our company dies every summer. So if we put them together, you’ve got a 12 month Salesforce, 12 month administration, 12 month warehouse. And I walked up to him and we high-fived each other, and I said, Doug, if ever we’re going to do it, man, now’s the time. And so we headed out to the accountants back in California calling each other that day. And it took about eight months, and it happened to be the year I was selling the company anyway to, you know, looking to sell it. And it just worked out perfectly for him and for me.
John Corcoran: 20:08
And what was it like for you after it sold? There are a lot of founders that end up being sad moments for them.
Brian Smith: 20:17
As you know, I’m going to segue into my book here, the theme of my book.
John Corcoran: 20:24
Which is The Birth of a Brand: Launching Your Entrepreneurial Passion and Soul by Brian Smith.
Brian Smith: 20:28
Yeah. So it’s like a roadmap for entrepreneurs. And the theme of it is that you can’t give birth to adults, right? You conceive of an idea, you take action. That’s the birth.
So me buying six pairs of samples of UGGs was the birth. And then it just lies there, and it just lies there, and it lies there. And it’s no amount of feeding or jiggling or playing with it. This infant cannot get up and go to college, right? But eventually it’ll start toddling, which is great because, you know, people are writing articles about you in magazines, and all your friends are telling all their friends about your product.
And then that’ll go into the youth phase where you’ve got, you know, productions working and financing is working and admin is working and shipping and warehousing is, you know, everything’s clicking and you can run a 20 or $30 million company in the youth phase. And if it’s a great product or a great service, you’re going to hit the teenage years. And you can recall as a teenager on a Saturday night, you want to be at every party in town, right? Well, it’s the same in business. You want to be in every mass retailer and you want to be in every major trade show.
And you can outstrip your capital so quickly and go broke in that. So we’re able to get through that and put the, you know, the controls in. And it became a mature company. So I started out telling you that story for a reason. And you asked me a question.
John Corcoran: 21:53
Because I was asking how you felt when you sold, when you sold the company.
Brian Smith: 21:57
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So number one, I was grateful and thankful because I’d made it through the season and kept the company, kept the brand alive. Right? It could have gone dead that year. Right.
But I kept the brand alive. And like, even today, I like last week I was in Utah at a talk in Utah. And I’m walking through the airport and I’m just noticing how many pairs of UGGs and I keep looking behind to make sure they got the logos. The logo, you know.
John Corcoran: 22:29
Because they’re knockoffs. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Brian Smith: 22:31
And I was just so, so proud of that. And it’s like when I sold UGG, it was like walking my daughter down the aisle.
John Corcoran: 22:41
Oh, yeah.
Brian Smith: 22:42
Yeah. And handing it off to Deckers Corporation to get married and then go out into the big world. And they’re the ones that took it into the hundreds of millions and the billions, you know.
John Corcoran: 22:51
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Brian Smith: 22:52
So I’m super grateful. Super proud of you.
John Corcoran: 22:55
You seem like a very positive guy. So you don’t seem like the type that would dwell. So you didn’t have a period of depression or anything like that?
Brian Smith: 23:00
Oh, no, not from the sale. There were many times during the company where I was depressed and wanted to give up. Yeah. Many, many times. But I was luckily I, in fact, in the book there’s like 3 or 4 times when you’re going to think, how the hell did he stick around?
Why on earth did he stick around? You know? Yeah, but I just had this knowledge that, you know, 1 in 2 Australians had some sort of sheepskin footwear. So it’s not the product’s problem. It’s gotta be me.
And when I took responsibility for myself, then I started looking for alternative ways of doing things. And, and there’s always a, you know, one of the pieces of philosophy in my book is your most disappointing disappointments will always become your greatest blessings, you know. And I asked the audience, you know, who in the last 12 months or six months has had something disastrous happen in your personal life or your business. And now you look back and think, thank God that happened. I swear, Jon, 80%, every single audience, 80% of the people put their hands up. So, you know, even though I went through these disasters, it was never the product. It was me. And as long as I took responsibility for that, I was able to figure out a way around it.
John Corcoran: 24:19
How was your family during the time while you were running UG, and then what was their reaction like after you sold it?
Brian Smith: 24:26
Sure. Well, when I started, I didn’t have kids, and when I did have two girls, most of my traveling, like I had 30 reps all across the country and I would go travel with each. Each one had to have their ten best customers lined up for a visit. And so I was doing like 300 retailers a year for three years, and I put up 1.5 million frequent flyer miles. Right.
John Corcoran: 24:53
Yeah.
Brian Smith: 24:53
And my kids, you know, they were two and four and then three and five and four and six. You know, they didn’t even know I was gone half the time. Right. So, it was the best time for me to be traveling. But after I got back on the road, you know, my family was supportive, even though it took 7 or 8 years for me to actually draw some meaningful salary out.
Though my wife was really supportive of me and we just made it work. And yeah, here’s the interesting thing. You know, the big fires we just had out here in Brentwood and stuff. Yeah. One thing I did when I was on the road in those very early times when the kids were very young was, every single place I went, I sent them a postcard.
Right. One each. And I made some funny comment about, you know, where I was, right? And I found out years later that they had these plastic lunch boxes and they were she had two each. They were full of postcards.
Right. And we were talking about, well, what would happen if this house went on fire, you know, both of them, I swear, the first thing I’d get, dad, is my postcards. Right. So. So it’s really funny how, you know, 20, 30 years later that sort of backed in. I had no idea how important that was, but it turned out to be a really, really meaningful thing to communicate.
John Corcoran: 26:30
Yeah. After you had after you sold the company and you moved into Brian 2.0 or whatever you want to call it, how did you square your identity of who you were after that? You talked a lot about how I sold the company because we ran into these cash flow issues and I couldn’t figure it out. But, you know, did you have a vision of what you would be after you sold the company, or did you figure that out later?
Brian Smith: 26:56
No. Not really. If you know, I stayed on and they wanted me to be VP of marketing. But, you know, I don’t have a political bone in my body, so I knew I’d never last in a public company, you know? Yeah.
So? So I consulted for a couple of years, and during that period I helped steer them. We’d made a connection with Oprah in my last year of running a company, and I steered that through because, you know, we went when we sent them to her and she just flipped out how good they were and bought 20 pairs for her, her staff. Right. Everyone said, oh, man, let’s do a press release and I’m going, no, no, no no no no no.
Because if we had to let the world know that she loved UGG boots and they all started ordering from us, we would have been dead. I mean, out of business.
John Corcoran: 27:44
Yeah. There’s other companies like that that were Oprah’s favorite things and that, you know, couldn’t handle the growth.
Brian Smith: 27:50
It’s suicide. And because of the same, you know, you can’t give birth to adults. I spent that two years of consulting, working on getting, you know, because deckers had the money, they had 20, $30 million in the bank, you know, and so they put together the, you know, the, the production and the capacity and the ability to react. So when Oprah did her best picks for Christmas and Oprah’s Favorite Things, when she did that, we were ready and we were able to take advantage of that. And it went like overnight into the hundreds of millions.
John Corcoran: 28:25
And what.
Brian Smith: 28:25
Was that? What was that experience like? Were you involved in that? Did you go to her show or anything like that?
Brian Smith: 28:30
No no no no, I, I auditioned, but back then I, I didn’t know anything about public speaking, you know, and I would draw I remember that they came to my house to film me, you know, and I remember droning off about just totally inconsequential shit, you know, and they weren’t. Now, I’ve learned, had I known how to speak in soundbites, you know, and like today, I’m trying my best to keep the story short, to not lose your audience, you know? And if I hadn’t known that, I probably would have been on the show. But it happened regardless of whether, you know, it didn’t. It didn’t need Brian Smith to make it work.
John Corcoran: 29:08
What do you think about the, you know, the world now of launching a product is so different. You know, with social media and, you know, rapid iteration and direct to consumer and all that kind of stuff. Are you advising companies that are launching products today?
Brian Smith: 29:23
Yes, I have a couple of people. One in particular that I mentor is a young lady here in San Diego. She has a lamb leather crossbody bag, and it’s called the sash bag. It’s a brilliant product, really, really, really similar to UGG because it’s lamb leather and it’s just exquisite to touch. And she’s got all the same marketing problems I had.
But she started selling online from day one, right? We never sold it in 95. So the internet hadn’t really started yet. But even though the means are different, like everything’s electronic now whereas we had paper and colored printing. Right? Yeah. Now you can put a website out there and look like a $1 million company, and nobody knows that you’re working out of your garage, right?
John Corcoran: 30:14
Yeah.
Brian Smith: 30:14
No, no. And if you got the right, you know, material, but it still comes back to the fundamentals. So many people put their product out and they think they advertise the product. And nobody gives a shit because you haven’t given them why they should have it. Yeah.
You know, remember my surfer guys? Why do they want to be in that photo? Oh my God, I’d love to have that product because I, you know, so the principles haven’t changed. It’s just that the medium of putting it out there has changed.
John Corcoran: 30:46
What is it like for you? I know you do a lot of speaking. You’re. I’m going to see you speak in two weeks. And the LA Valley chapter, which I’m really excited about. I saw you speak in Washington, DC. You came and spoke to our San Francisco chapter.
Brian Smith: 30:58
And you’re still not burned out.
John Corcoran: 31:00
I’m not burned out. Still enjoying these. this. Still enjoying these stories. What is it like for you to go around and to meet with, you know, entrepreneurs who are still in the thick of it, still in the struggle and, you know, share some of your stories. What is it like for you?
Brian Smith: 31:15
It’s fantastic. Because in my talk, especially the talk, I got different talks for different corporations. Right. But with the EO, let’s say I’ve got 15 different takeaways, which nobody really picks up on. But someone in the audience is going to come up to me afterwards and go, oh my God, thank you for talking about this.
I’m really in trouble with this. And then the next person will come up and say, oh my God, thank you for talking about this. It’ll be something different. And they probably didn’t hear the one that the other guy heard, right? Yeah.
And so everyone in EO is in a different phase of running their businesses. And when they hear the stories that I talk about, you know. And there’s so much philosophy in my book which I bring out on stage as well. And they go, thank you for that. You know, I’m so, you know, I thought I was failing and now I realize my product’s still in its infancy.
That’s why it’s just lying there, you know? Yeah. And they can identify and get hope because I don’t talk about all the wins. I don’t talk about the, you know, all the big successful things. I will talk about all the disasters. Yeah. That stopped me dead and how I got around them. And that’s why I think the EO entrepreneurs love the story so much.
John Corcoran: 32:38
Yeah, I remember you telling me about selling the boots out of the back of the trunk of your car in Malibu, going to different surf breaks from surf break to surf break. Selling the boots. Yeah.
Brian Smith: 32:47
Yeah.
John Corcoran: 32:47
Yeah. That’s great. Well, Brian, this has been great. I want to wrap up with my gratitude question. I’m a big fan of gratitude and giving our guests a little bit of space at the end here to thank anyone, any friends, peers, contemporaries, mentors who I know you didn’t have a lot. We talked about that earlier, but is there anyone in particular that you would want to thank for helping you in your journey?
Brian Smith: 33:11
Yeah, in fact, you got to meet this guy when you come down because he lives in Calabasas, which is where the next EO talk is.
John Corcoran: 33:19
Yeah.
Brian Smith: 33:20
And that’s Doug, my buddy who is surfing with me. When I had the revelation that there were no UGG boots in America because he and he and I started out together. But like when we imported the boots and did the first sales run, our sales for the first year was 28 pairs, you know, $1,000. And we thought we were going to be instant millionaires.
John Corcoran: 33:42
Yeah.
Brian Smith: 33:43
And, you know, Doug went and got another job and we stayed friendly the whole time. But I was pretty much stuck with the UGG boot business because I had 480 pairs left in my third bedroom. Right. But Doug and I have stayed together. And there were lots of marketing ideas that he gave to me that I never would have picked up on for myself. And anyway, because we stayed in touch and I’m speaking in his neck of the woods, he’s going to come to the event.
John Corcoran: 34:13
Excellent. Great. Well, that’s my hometown. That’s where my parents live and my brother lives.
Brian Smith: 34:17
That’s a great area, I love it.
John Corcoran: 34:19
Yeah. It is. It is right over the hill to form the surf.
Brian Smith: 34:22
Breaks right down the last virgin road down to Malibu. Yeah.
John Corcoran: 34:25
Canon. Yeah. You can drive through all the canyons. Well, some of them are closed unfortunately right now because of the fires, but hopefully they’ll be open soon. Yeah, well, Brian, this has been great. Where can people go to check out your book and check out you and book you as a speaker? If they.
Brian Smith: 34:39
Well, listen, it’s the book’s on Amazon. The Birth of a Brand. Yeah. And the website has my email at the bottom of it. Or it’s also at the back of the book, which is [email protected]. Yeah. And if any of you are learning chairs or you’re friends with the learning chair of your chapter, and I haven’t been around in the last two years, anything older than that’s great because I’ve got completely new stories. But I would love to come. And my goal is to try and speak at all of the chapters I’m about halfway through.
And yeah, I’d love to do that. Or any corporation that you might work with who’s got a big sales force or, you know, has marketing issues. I’d love to talk about that because marketing is really my passion and that’s what I’m in love with. Yeah, yeah, that’s what I do.
John Corcoran: 35:33
Yeah. Brian, thank you so much for your time.
Brian Smith: 35:36
Hey, John. Pleasure being here. Thank you. Bye bye.
Outro: 35:42
Thanks for listening to the Smart Business Revolution Podcast. We’ll see you again next time, and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.