0 (2s):
Boom, shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs On Fire brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network with great shows like Business Made Simple. Today, we're pulling a timeless EOFire episode from the archives, so the giveaway may not be active and we'll be breaking down the upside of adversity. To drop these value bombs I had brought to Brian Smith and the EOFire Studios, Brian decided that life and public accounting was not for him. He quit his job, went to California to look for a new business idea and to surf. He soon noticed that there were no sheepskin boots in California, so he and a friend bought six pairs from Australia to test, and so U was born. Today Fire Nation will talk about how you need a certain amount of ignorance to be a good entrepreneur.

0 (44s):
We'll talk about the most disappointing disappointments, become your greatest blessings and so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring. Today's episode goes to Brian and our sponsors. The best podcast listening and discovery app in the world is here and is called Podopolo. Visit Podopolo.com. Download the app, mention John Lee Dumas my Podopolo username when you sign up for a free account, and start listening now. That's P O D O P O L O.com. The Gold Digger podcast hosted by Jenna Kucher is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Tune in and discover your dream career with productivity tips, business hacks, and so much more.

0 (1m 27s):
Jenna's recent episode on four Questions To qualify your Digital Products idea is a must. Listen, listen to Goal Digger wherever you get your podcasts. Brian, say What's up to Fire Nation and share something interesting about yourself that most people don't know.

1 (1m 46s):
Okay, well, high Fire Nation, good to be back again. It's been a few years. Yeah. One thing about you, you don't know about me, I'm taking my seven year old grandson to his first rugby practice today and I played rugby against England and against the New Zealand All Blacks in my prime. And then I coached San Diego State rugby team when I first got to America 40 years ago. And all the kids that I coached have now grown up had kids and they started this incredible rugby league in North County, San Diego. And it's, you know, overtaken soccer.

1 (2m 27s):
And it's cool to have my grandson as the third generation of, you know, kids getting on the field and enjoying themselves.

0 (2m 36s):
That is super cool, for obvious reasons. Now, I do have what could be a pretty sensitive question, but did you ever beat the All Blacks?

1 (2m 46s):
No, we had a, we had a moral victory. The, they were playing on a tour across Australia. They beat the state of Tasmania 116 to nothing. And then they beat the state of South Australia, 124 to nothing. And we were next and we, we held them 33 to three. So you

0 (3m 7s):
Scored,

1 (3m 8s):
I mean, we lost and I kicked the field goal so

0 (3m 11s):
That

1 (3m 11s):
That was about, you know, it was almost like a victory for us.

0 (3m 14s):
Oh, I love that. I love that. Well, Fire Nation, as I shared in the intro, we have a lot of great things to talk about with Brian. He's obviously the founder of Uug and he's got quite a backstory, which he told earlier on Fire Nation, on Entrepreneurs On Fire on an episode long, long time ago. And we're gonna be bringing some new side, some new questions, some new fire to this episode and I can't wait to dive on him. Cool,

1 (3m 41s):
Let's go.

0 (3m 42s):
So Brian, your backstory, your background is fascinating. So why don't you give Fire Nation those of us that don't know the full background, the full backstory, your backstory of u

1 (3m 53s):
I was an accountant in Perth 40 years ago and took 10 years to graduate and I quit the same day as I graduated. I hated it. And I always had a feeling in me that I wanted to do my own business. And after a lot of meditation, I, I realized that all the big trends were coming outta California, like Levi jeans and waterbeds and all the skate brands and surf brands and everything. And I thought, I'm gonna go to California and find the next big one and bring it back. So I did. I arrived in, in Santa Monica within a couple of weeks in Los Angeles and, and I brought my surfboard in my suitcase and I went straight to Malibu and started surfing cuz it had always been a big dream of mine.

1 (4m 38s):
And after a couple of months up there, I still hadn't found the next big thing, but I'd made a ton of friends in the surf market. And then it was about late October, early November, I was surfing and the, the water was getting really chilly and the wind was cold. And I remember getting out of the surf and putting on my sheep skin boots that I'd brought from Australia with me. And I, and I just had this flash and thought, oh my God, there are no sheep skin boots in America. And one in two Australians had some sort of sheep skin footwear. So I looked at my buddy Doug and said, man, we gotta go into business, we're gonna be instant millionaires.

1 (5m 20s):
And you know what, that's like, you know, every, every entrepreneur gets bitten with this dream or this flash of insight on a new product or service and they think it's gonna be oh instant. And unfortunately that's not really how it happens. We ended up finding a manufacturer in Australia and ordered six pairs of samples and we went around to all the shoe stores and got shot out completely, like 150 stores. Oof, not interested though. They just said we were crazy bringing sheepskin into California. But, but California's climates identical to Australia. So that wasn't the reason. And it made, you know, as an entrepreneur, you have to learn to pivot when you, when you sort of hit a wall.

1 (6m 5s):
And we started asking, well how come all my friends up at Malibu think this is the best idea in the world? And it struck me, well a lot of them went down to Australia on their surf trips and bought four or five pairs of boots back for their buddies. So within the surf community it was pretty well known. So as another pivot, we decided to go call on the surf shops and everyone we went to just as, oh my God, they, those things are great. You're gonna make a fortune if you import those. And so we were so buoyed up, we, we raised about 20 grand, which in today's money is about 70,000. And we bought 500 pairs to handle all this demand we had from the surf shops.

1 (6m 49s):
And when the product arrived just before Christmas, we, we did our, you know, big delivery run for the, for the year or the order taking run. And, and we went back to the same stores and, and all I can remember getting was, oh my God, Brian, well done. You're gonna make a fortune. But we couldn't sell 'em in our store. We'd just sell surfboards and trunks and booties and, and you know, they're way too expensive, but you'll do great in the shoe stores. And so the, the net result of that after, you know, two or three weeks of trying to push them out out on the road was by Christmas we sold 28 pairs, which was ho horribly disappointing. But the, the point that I got out of that ended up being the theme of the book that I wrote the book called The Birth of a Brand.

1 (7m 40s):
And the theme of the book is that you can't give birth to adults after all of the different businesses that I've started. They all follow the same pattern as you conceive the idea and you take the first action, which is birth, like the birth of aguas, buying six pairs of samples, and then it just lies there and it lies there. And there's no amount of feeding or yelling or jiggling the cradle. An infant can't get up and go to college. It has to be an infant. And eventually if you nurture it enough, it'll keep, it'll start toddling. And that's cool cause you know, first people are buying your product and magazines are writing articles about you. And, and that quickly goes then into the youth phase, which is a great phase.

1 (8m 24s):
You know, it's just like the kids can put on their clothes and brush their teeth without you. Now you've got orders happening and sales that, you know, coming in and the production's good and the accounting and shipping is great and you know, you can run a 20, 30 million company in that, that phase of use. But if it's a really, really great product or service, you're gonna hit the teenage years eventually. And just like you wanted to be in every party in town as a teenager, you have this tendency to wanna be in every big mass retailer, retailer and everything real show. And it's so easy to outstrip your capital and go crash and burn. And I have seen a lot of companies do that and I almost lost control of about it several times during that period.

1 (9m 8s):
So eventually though it becomes a mature company and you know, things are sort of predictable.

0 (9m 14s):
But Brian, as entrepreneurs we're like always being told to prove our concept before we proceed. We're always told to make sure there's an actual real need for our idea. That our idea is a solution to an actual pain point. But you didn't have that. I mean, how are you able to build a market for a product when there wasn't this perceived need where people weren't waking up in the morning and saying, oh I wish I had these, these boots. What, what did you do to accomplish that?

1 (9m 44s):
It was even worse than that. It was like those things are so ugly and sweaty and prickly and you can't get 'em wet and, and you know, we have mud and slush where we are, you know, but it, it was the ignorance of the American public, you know, Americans don't understand sheep skin like Australians, cuz Australians know that you can't rip it, you can get it wet and it keeps you warm even though it's wet, you know, you can wash it, you know, all these things that, that are normal to Australians. So I didn't understand how little Americans or how much resistance I would get, and it was purely because I knew how popular they were in Australia that kept me going.

1 (10m 26s):
Had I not had that background, I would've given up probably in the first year or two. But the perseverance is amazing. And, and the other thing is, so many entrepreneurs wait till till, oh, I haven't got it perfect yet. You know, and that's a huge disaster for any entrepreneur that one of my themes in the book is that you, you have to have a certain amount of ignorance to be a good entrepreneur because if you knew all the obstacles that are out ahead of you, you would never in a million years start a business. But it's the ignorance of, and the, and the passion of, of the, the dream of making something happen. That's what makes entrepreneurs so fantastic and, and gets these businesses eventually off the ground.

1 (11m 9s):
But, but you know, so many people I see that, oh yeah, I'm gonna do this, but I haven't got this fixed yet. I haven't got that sourced yet, I haven't done, there's always a million reasons why they haven't started. But if you saw the first pair of Aug boots that came in, the samples, they were so horrible, you know, I should never have been able to put them into retail. But that's all we had. So we started. And so anyway, the message I'm trying to make to you and the listeners is if you have an idea, get started, don't wait for it to be perfect.

0 (11m 40s):
Now, you did eventually and successfully get into mainstream stores. So maybe tell us quickly, like what is the story behind actually, what was the, the domino that toppled to make that happen, but then also the takeaways for us entrepreneurs, you know, with our products, with our services, with our concepts and ideas.

1 (11m 59s):
Sure, sure. It, it's quite profound and it took me three or four years to figure out, so the first year sales were like 5,000. The next year I decided to advertise. So I got these really, you know, cute models and put 'em on the beach at wind and saying, use those with the ads, you know, with the, with the boots showing, you know, major portion of the ad and sales went to 10,000 and I did the tried better looking models the next year and sales went to 20,000. And I knew something was wrong. And it wasn't until I was having a beer with one of my customers one Friday night and, and I was explaining this dilemma that I, I couldn't get any traction and he just, ah, shut up Brian.

1 (12m 39s):
And he calls out to these little 12, 13 year old grommets in the back of the surf shop and he says, Hey, you guys, what do you think are ugs? And every one of them came out and said, oh, those ugs, man, they're so fake. Have you, have you seen those ads, those models, they can't surf. And instantly I knew what they were talking about. I looked at those ads with a new, new new light and, and thought, oh my God, they're so fake, they're so posed. So in again, pivoting, I called a buddy of mine who was running a scholastic surf association and I said, Pete, do you have any young kids who are gonna turn pro soon? And he, he gave me a couple of guys and I, instead of hiring a big photographer and doing a pose, shoot, I just went surfing with him and took photos on the way to Blacks Beach and tr and these are two, you know, iconic surf walks, they're about a mile long and fantastic surf at the end.

1 (13m 34s):
And I just ran photos of of them in September, October, November, December, and the sales went over $200,000. Dang. And the reason was that I, I struck a chord with every little kid who reads Surfer Magazine would die to be walking down those roads with Mike Parsons and Ted Robinson, you know, the young pros. And that was the day I sort of understood and became an absolute, you know, student of marketing and advertising. And the rule, the takeaway here is you don't ever advertise your products like I was, you know, the first ads was all about the boots, the ads that worked.

1 (14m 18s):
You could hardly see the boots. They were so small in the photos, but the image was such that every little kid would die to be in that photograph. So extrapolating there, if you have a, a software product that saves time, for instance, you don't put a photograph of your software out there on the, in the, in your ads. You have a photo of some guy in, in the Caribbean drinking a rum drink with all the time he's saving from your product. So you have to capture the image of what you want your target market to feel, and the, and the, the more you can get emotion into the visuals or you know, the, you know, video.

1 (15m 1s):
If you do that, the more you can get this emotion for people to wanna be in there, the more successful you'll be in

0 (15m 8s):
Foundation. I think a great example of this is the Doki commercial, the world's most interesting man. I mean that whole commercial, that whole thing, it was not about the Beard doki per se, like it was there, but I mean it was all about the most interesting man in the world being in the most interesting places in the world with the women and the locations and this and the that we're like, we wanna be there with him and oh yeah, he's holding a doe so obviously that's part of what it means to be with him. And that was just kind of into the subconscious. And then of course that became a really successful campaign. So go ahead Brian.

1 (15m 40s):
No that you hit it on the head. That's the, the more emotion you can get into an ad, the more successful it will be

0 (15m 47s):
In Fire Nation. If you think Brian is done dropping value bombs, you have another thing coming and we'll be back as soon as we get back from thanking our sponsors. Ready to ditch your subpar podcast listening app and download an interactive app that has every feature you want and need with more great features being added all the time. The app is PODOPOLO and you can download it for free and start listening right now@Podopolo.com. Podopolo gives you access to every podcast at your fingertips with easy, discoverability, audio and video, podcast, and every genre and language and instant recommendations. So the perfect podcast and live streams find you without you having to lift a finger.

0 (16m 28s):
My favorite feature, Podopolo, is interactive. So you can create and share short snippets and discuss episodes with friends and your favorite hosts. Join me on Podopolo where you can interact with me, connect with others, ask questions, and share your thoughts on your favorite podcasts. Visit Podopolo.com, download the app for free from either app store. Mention John Lee Dumas, my Podopolo username when you sign up for an account and start listening now. That's P O D O P O L O.com.com Time, it's our most precious resource and something that I strive to maximize every day of the year. And maximizing my time comes the form of using tools that can help me work smarter, not harder.

0 (17m 8s):
The key is finding the right tools for your business. Ones that are easy to use, that give you access to the data that you need to make strategic business decisions and ones that make collaboration a breeze for your team. One tool that can help you accomplish this is HubSpot. HubSpot helps empower teams to do their best work by eliminating friction with connected easy to use tools. Imagine your team on the same page, working together towards a common goal. And with a centralized platform, you spend less time managing software and more time serving your customers. A HubSpot CRM platform is easy to integrate, use and love, learn how HubSpot can help your business grow better at hubspot.com.

0 (17m 48s):
That's hubspot.com. So Brian, we're back, and let's be honest, Uggs, they are a seasonal product for that market that you were targeting at the time, and that can be risky for businesses for obvious reasons. So how did you survive the lean times with this seasonal product?

1 (18m 6s):
Yeah, that's a really astute observation. Two issues. One, I had to get summer jobs. You know, first year was scraping boats at Marina Delray. The second year was construction in Bel Air. The third year I was working as a greenskeeper on a golf course. So I mean, I did anything I could to stay alive. And the biggest problem from the seasonality was financing because there was nothing happening for nine months. And then there's this huge rush of deliveries in October, November, December, and then it sort of dwindled down again. And so when I was going to banks trying to find money to finance the production, they, they would, for the first five years at least, they go, oh, Brian, this is a fad.

1 (18m 55s):
It'll be dead next year. You won't be around. And I couldn't convince them that this was a long-term play. And the other thing was that they saw, you know, flat line for nine months and then this huge spike in cash need and a cash, you know, income and that scared the heck out of them. So, you know, going back, if, if I had one thing to change in that whole 20 year period that I owned ag brand, it would've been to get somebody who understood finance and who understood how to project cash flows. Now, today, that's relatively easy because there's all these business programs out there, you know, business plan programs, and they all have a component for an ex Excel spreadsheet for forecasting.

1 (19m 41s):
But back when I was doing it, it was all on handwritten and green bar and you had to add every column with a calculator. And it was, it took, it took months to do a forecast, you know, so there should be no excuse today for, for getting somebody in who understands how to project what your sales are gonna be, what your costs are gonna be, all the incidental expenses, and you can pretty much figure out where you're going to need the money just by looking at the cash flow line. And I would strongly recommend anyone who's starting a business or who has hasn't implemented that in their current business absolutely gets somebody in who understands financing because the bigger you grow, the worse the problem gets.

1 (20m 23s):
For years, I thought, like, I remember when I did a million in sales and I was broke, I thought, okay, the answer is to sell 2 million next year. Well, I did sell 2 million next year. I was twice as broke, I had more debt because growth can kill you if you don't have the right financing in place. And I, I, if anyone reads my book, that's gonna be the recurring theme from from, you know, starting out with 28 pairs all the way up to 20 million. You know, it, it never got easier. It always got more difficult. The, the bigger the company became

0 (20m 58s):
A critical part of your business. Fire Nation understand finance in the cash flow side of your business. If you don't have that part under control, if you don't have somebody with their finger on the pulse of that, your business is in trouble. And I love how you shared that, Brian, the growth can kill your business if you are not prepared. I mean, I'll tell you, it has happened on this podcast. We call it the hug of death. Sometimes companies come on, we talk about their product and their service and they're on the growth stage and then this podcast sends all the traffic to that product, to that service, and that company's not ready for it. And that growth is like a hug of death and it literally can drive them underwater.

0 (21m 41s):
And I hate seeing that. So that's why I always try to prepare people. It's like, listen, if you come on and if you really resonate with my audience and they come at you in droves, can you handle this? Like, are you truly an entrepreneur on fire? Is your business rock and roll? And, cause I don't wanna be the reason that you get this hug of death if you can't handle it. So realize that we all want bigger numbers, we all want growth, but at what cost you have to do it the right way. And Brian, we touched on this earlier, but I wanna dive a little bit deeper into this, is that so many people do seem to just be afraid to start because they don't know exactly how to start now, there wasn't really a roadmap for you to follow when you started. So what the heck kept you going and what would you recommend to those listeners who are potentially going down this same path?

1 (22m 28s):
Sure. Let me try and explain it this way. So many people are waiting for all the conditions to be just perfect. You know, the perfect development of the product or service, the perfect advertising campaign. It, it doesn't work that way. It, here, there's a saying that's thousands and thousands of years old. That is once you start out on a path, the universe will conspire to work with you. And how I explain that is that the universe, the world we live in has everything that you could possibly ever dream of or want. It already exists somewhere, right?

1 (23m 9s):
And John, when's the last time you saw an advertisement for a refrigerator? Been

0 (23m 14s):
A little

1 (23m 14s):
While, but if you needed one this Saturday, you would start seeing evidence of refrigerators everywhere.

0 (23m 21s):
That's a good point.

1 (23m 21s):
On the street, looking in, in Windows. And we'd be refrigerators, you'd be at Starbucks and the classified newspapers open and there's ads of refrigerators all over it. You, you'll be flicking through TV channels or whatever and you'll see it, it it, they've always been there, they've never gone away, but you never saw them because your focus wasn't on refrigerators. But the minute you start to focus in on a refrigerator, it's everywhere. Now extrapolate that into starting a business, yo, I've never seen it done before. I don't know what to do. You know, this is scary. But the minute you start out and take the first action, something will happen that will come into your awareness to go, oh my God, that fits with what I'm doing.

1 (24m 8s):
And the next day I'll be, oh my God, look at this magazine. I could use that in my business. Then suddenly all this information that's always been there begins to focus itself into your vision and your direction. So the bottom line is get started. You, you, you'll never get this information if you're sitting on a couch waiting and wishing

0 (24m 29s):
The whole universe conspiring around us. Fire Nation is so true. And the one that always hits me on the head, Brian, is when we go out and we buy this new car and we're like, oh my God. Like I'm a, I have this new car that nobody else has because I never see this car around. And then literally you see this card every single stoplight you're at because you just never saw the card before. It was always there, but it wasn't like in your universe. But now that you own that card, you see it every single place you go because now it's in your universe. So Fire Nation get going, make your universe conspire for you, not against you. There's no identical roadmap that we can follow.

0 (25m 9s):
Brian didn't have a roadmap. I didn't have a roadmap. We just took that next step. And in fact, I love that Martin Luther King quote, you don't have to see the whole staircase to take the next step. You just take the next step and then the following step will be revealed for you. And Brian, you wrote the book, The Birth of a Brand. Tell us why you wrote this book and who is it for?

1 (25m 33s):
Well, it's a roadmap for entrepreneurs. Don't ask me why, but even in the early days of arc, I, I would have some article or some advertisement that I did or something would happen in the business. I'd say, well that'd be great in a book one day. And I, I've had this little three ring binder about an inch deep, you know, and I would just throw, these didn't even punch holes, I'd just throw 'em in this binder. And after 20 years, this binder was like a, a three inch thick ring binder. And then, you know, I sold the company and got invested in a bunch of other companies.

1 (26m 15s):
But when the recession hit, things slowed down. And I thought, you know, I'm gonna find that file and I'm gonna write a book about this. And, and so I had records of every meaningful thing that had happened from the time I started to the, you know, 18 or 19 years that I owned the company. And it turned out to be I, I wrote it chronologically. So it's, it's really the story of me having that aha moment at Malibu and importing the first boots all the, the way through to the sale of the company. And it's got, you know, lots of little successful things in there. But by far the most important part is all the disasters that I created.

1 (26m 58s):
And I swear it was, it was just because the product was so damn good that it, it sort of hung in there while I made all these horrible decisions around it, but still survived because every time I made a, a blunder or something didn't happen the way I thought it would, I stuck in there and I adjusted. And the one of the big, like, there's a lot of philosophy and spirituality in the book, which I've developed over the years and one of the greatest statements in the book is that nearly always your most disappointing disappointments will become your greatest blessings. And it's, when I talk from the stage, which is what I love to do most, I always ask, you know, how many of you had something happen in the last 12 months that at the time you thought was the greatest disaster?

1 (27m 46s):
And now you look back and think, thank god that happened because what you're doing now is so much better. And I swear two-thirds to three quarters of the audience put their hand up every single time. Wow. Wow. So it's an infallible piece of philosophy.

0 (27m 60s):
Where would you like Fire Nation to find out more about this book?

1 (28m 4s):
You can find it on Amazon. It's called The Birth of a Brand. And I did the audio just like a few months ago, so it's like a brand new thing on Amazon. And I, I read the whole thing and it's funny, I, in four years I always thought, well if I ever do the audio, I'm gonna update it and I'm gonna, you know, you know, just completely revamp the thing. I ended up not changing a single word. I, I was staggered that the information in there is so timeless. Wow. And you know, sure we got social media and we've got electronics and instant clicks and, and and everything now, but the principles of marketing and advertising and selling and business building, the principles haven't changed one bit.

1 (28m 56s):
It's just that the methodology we use now is so much faster and quicker and you know, you, you have so much more information at your fingertips. But the book itself is pretty much timeless as far as the, you know, how what it takes to build a business and the emotional strength that you have to have to hang in

0 (29m 14s):
There. Fire Nation, we're gonna end with this. Success leaves clues and you are hearing the voice right now of a top 1% of the top 1% of all entrepreneurs who have walked on this earth. So you need to make sure that you are listening because success leaves clues. And our guest today, Brian, has had massive, massive success. So go check out The Birth of a Brand you love Audio Fire Nation. So check out the audiobook cause you're gonna hear Brian's actual voice as he reads this book as he breaks down his knowledge on this. So definitely check that out cuz you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You have been hanging out with Brian and JLD today.

0 (29m 57s):
So keep up the heat and as always hit over to EOFire.com type Brian in the search bar so all the links for the show notes will come up in that show notes page. And of course you can go back and hear the episode Brian and I did a few years back cuz a lot has changed since then and we dropped some heat back then as well. So Brian, thank you for sharing your knowledge with my audience today. For that we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side.

1 (30m 23s):
Thanks John. Go Fire Nation.

0 (30m 26s):
Hey Fire Nation, today's value Bomb content was brought to you by Brian and Fire Nation. I know that you understand how podcasts can ignite your business, but let's be honest, the planning, the creating, the collaborating with guests, the producing and distributing it takes time. It takes time and it can be intense. That's why I am fired up for you to check out Auxbus. Auxbus has an end-to-end podcast creation platform for entrepreneurs just like you. Visit Auxbus.com/jld today. That's a Auxbus.com/jld. Auxbus.com/jld to try it for free. I'll catch you there, Fire Nation, or I'll catch you on the flip side.

0 (31m 10s):
The best podcast listening and discovery app in the world is here and it's called Podopolo. Visit Podopolo.com. Download the app, mention John Lee Dumas my PODOPOLO username when you sign up for a free account and start listening now. That's P O D O P O L O.com. The Gold Digger podcast hosted by Jenna Kucher is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Tune in and discover your dream career with productivity tips, business hacks, and so much more. Jenna's recent episode on four Questions. To qualify your digital products idea is a must. Listen, listen to Goal Digger wherever you get your podcasts.