How UGG Boots Went From $0-$1.8 Billion! (Founder, Brian Smith, Interview)

hi I'm Brian Smith the founder of the billion dollar egg brand and I am one of the passionate few hey guys welcome to this episode of the passion few today we get to sit down with a Brian Smith he's the founder of UGG boots and we get to hear the whole story of not only how he conceived the idea on the beach in the sand one day but how he took those Australian boots and built it into a billion dollar business and this year they're projected to do over 2 billion in sales so how did he start it what were those early days like we hear the whole story from scratch and more in this interview so sit back relax and get inspired for this one because you won't want to miss it and also if you want to know how to get in touch with your dream guests same way I've got in touch with mine in the link below I've put together three videos that will help you get in touch with anybody well no further adieu hope you sit back relax and enjoy this powerful interview with Brian thanks for being on the show today Brian my pleasure thanks for having me absolutely thanks for having us here it's beautiful home right thank you so let's get right into it a lot of people know about the UGG brand where did this all begin I know you have a wild journey so he tell us a little bit about where you grew up what your childhood was like sure sure yeah I grew up on the east coast of Australia and had a great upbringing I had you know 50% of it was at the beach because my parents had a house at the coast and the rest was in a city called Canberra and I ended up you know not one not knowing what I wanted to do after high school and so my parents convinced me accounting was the the big thing so I became an accountant not realizing that I didn't really like it it took me ten years to graduate and the day I graduated I quit because I really you know I I hate giving up on things but I I knew I didn't want to be an accountant the rest of my life what made you take ten years to get that accounting degree just my stubbornness and not you know not ready to give in and I'm glad I did it now you know that the knowledge I gained was fantastic you know anyone who's running a business to have you know financial knowledge is really really good take that back accounting knowledge I didn't have financial we'll talk about that later on you know there was one of my biggest you know regrets but I I was sort of wandering around for a couple of months after I quit trying to figure out what I was going to do and I remember I just started yoga then and meditation and I was meditating and I I just had this goosebumps came over me and I thought oh my god all the big trends are coming out of California mm-hmm you know like Levi's jeans and water beds and you know surf brands and everything so I've just figured I'm gonna go to California I'm gonna find the next big big thing and I'm gonna bring it back to Australia and make my fortune did you at that time have aspirations to be an entrepreneur was your parents entrepreneurs I mean that see them as a contractor but he he did not want he fought me you know when I told him I was coming to America he didn't want that and I looking back now I think it's just because being an entrepreneur is very very hard at times he didn't want me to have to go through that right that's you know looking back at the time I I just felt he was you know real stubborn you know over here but anyway I came to America and I arrived with a surfboard in my suitcase and I got a place at Malibu because I'm sorry at Santa Monica because I wanted to surf Malibu and it's always been a big dream of mine and so I just went up to the you know beach therefore you know the first month and got to know a bunch of people and didn't find the next big thing and then two or three months later was that is I think was in the Serta for smart that it was like October now and the water was getting real cold and I'd brought my sheepskin boots from Australia yeah and I remember on the beach I was pulling them on and I went oh there's no sheepskin boots in America and that was one in two Australians aren't some sort of sheepskin Footwear yeah so I had this my period again where I looked at my buddy and said Doug oh man we got to go to businessman we're gonna be instant millionaire yeah yeah Wow so how old were you when you came here to Santa Monica it's 29 so 29 came here and at that time you you came consciously to like I'm gonna find the thing to obviously get rich so second I'm finding the next big you know thing that didn't exist in Australia that I could get rich on yeah so your plan was to find something in California take it to Australia and then capitalize on yeah yeah so then walk me through the moment you're putting on your boots you have this epiphany what's the first step you took well we went surfing but then we drive straight back home to my house and you know and we did a little research and found some manufacturers and we called one in Albany Western Australia and to cut a long story short we you know you're talking to me they're letting us be his distributor and we had to send some money down and buy six pairs of samples so they arrived about three weeks later and you know they weren't very glamorous boots back then but they were they were what they were and so Doug was gonna be the salesman because I was an account that I hated sales right and so he went on the road and came back like a week later he had about 150 business cards Wow with zero sales he'd been to every single shoe retailer yeah Southern California and nobody purchased not a day I just said are you crazy trying to sell sheepskin in California yeah it'll never work but but the interesting thing was that Australia's climbers identical to California so that wasn't there so they would they just didn't get sheepskin and so you know every good entrepreneur has to know when sort of pivot you know like right yeah you hit a wall you got a choice you can give up and go away or you can figure out a way around it all right so so we thought okay well how come all my buddies up at Malibu think this is the best idea in the world mm-hmm and it struck me oh my god they all surfed a lot of them been to Australia and had brought four or five pairs of boots back for their buddies so within the surf community it was pretty well known right so Doug and I decided to switch and go after surf shops so we went down and we you know on the first one I now went on the road even though I was terrified you know I remember pulling over my little sample pack and in the owner of the surf shop guys oh my god sheepskin boots they look great you know what are you doing with them and I said well we're thinking of going into business you're importing it oh my god you're gonna make a fortune those things are the best things in the world yeah yeah and I thought wow you know selling is not so bad yeah yeah yeah so I just kept doing that all the way down the coast all the way to San Diego from from Santa Monica and you got positive feedback it was a show every single one just thought it was gonna be fantastic Wow and so Doug and I regrouped back in my little house in Santa Monica it never occurred to us that we hadn't asked for any orders you know yeah because we didn't have any inventory I mean what was the point we were so busy being future millionaires anyway yeah and so we raised some money you know you heard that saying that once you start out on a path the universe will conspire to work with you absolutely well here's a perfect example my roommate overheard us saying we had to raise some money he said here's a buddy at work he was looking to invest so just like that we raised 20 grand Wow and we sent 15 down to Australia ordered 500 pairs of boots Wow so you guys went all in on the idea well we were gonna be millionaires yeah everybody loved it yeah of course we went all-in was there was there any anxiety before you decided or was it kind of like reckless abandon a little bit it's it's bizarre but there was no exit anxiety sending the money down but the night I sent Dara had this this nightmare that the sheepskin factory and all the production was it and the sheepskin factory burned down so that was like that I haven't thought of that in 40 years yeah but no I didn't have any reservations we were all in and so they arrived you know in December 500 pairs and we sorted them all out in the you know third bedroom in my house in Santa Monica and then Doug and I we loaded up our truck you know our cars and we headed off to the surf shops again and I walked into the same you know shop con surfboards and I said okay now you know I had my order pad okay how many do you want and he goes oh Brian you know yeah well done man but you know we couldn't sell them in our store we just sell trucks and surfboards and flip-flops and but don't worry you're gonna do great in the shoe stores mm-hmm I was like oh yeah this one I'm doing you know the next store well done Brian they're fantastic man but we just sell you know surfboards and bikinis and trunks and rent you know we couldn't sell those here but you're gonna do fantastic yeah and this happened all the way down the curve Doug was getting the same up in San Fernando Valley yeah and we regrouped you know at the end of the week and we tallied up our sales which so the first year sales of UGG was 28 pairs Wow exactly $1,000 in there and compares a month well know that twenty eight pairs was from our road trip yeah yeah so and it was now the end of the year and nobody wanted to buy anything in January anyway so so that was you know but but the funny thing is I learned a huge lesson after that and I wrote this book the birth of a brand mm-hmm and the theme of it is that you can't give birth to adults mm-hmm right every business every you know sandwich shop every sitcom on TV every religion everything starts with someone conceiving it and then they take the first action and that's the birth so the birth of Aguas was buying six pairs of samples you know but then every business just lies there mm-hmm and lies there lies there and there's no amount of extra feeding or jiggling the cradle or urging this thing that this infant can't get up and go to college you know mm-hmm but eventually if you know if you can hang in there and unfortunately most entrepreneurs give up because they think I had a brilliant idea it didn't work I'm done right on to the next honor the yeah but if you can handle if you really love your product or service you hang it through that infancy it's pretty soon it starts titling and then that's when you know magazines are writing articles about you and the first customers are buying it and they're all spreading the word that's a really cool phase and that will quickly go into the youth's which is you know consistent production orders are coming in great shipping and receiving is fantastic accountings working customer services where you can run a business business up to 20 million 25 million bucks a year in that youth phase but if it's a really really good service or product it's gonna hit the teenage years and you can remember you wanted to be at every party in town absolutely well it's the same in business you want to be in every trade show you want to be in every you know big-box retailer and you just don't have the capital to support all that you know as dream so it's so super dangerous phase right trying to be too big for who you are but eventually you know that you know the controllers come and put all the you know balances in and it becomes a mature company but yeah that's a very natural theme for every business so yeah we hang in through that infancy is important that was so HUD can you talk a little bit about that um first question I have is how did you know that it was important to hang through that infancy was it just kind of you loved it so much that you did or did you have mentors kind of not really really know I had 480 pairs of boots stuck in the third bedroom I mean oh yeah I had no choice it alright Vestas money's there so I couldn't just walk away from it yeah so I just started doing swap mates and street fairs and the best thing I did was had my Beckham a van you know open at Malibu after I was surfing mhm and I you know it had a whole range of product in there how much were you selling them for at the time they're about 80 bucks or 90 bucks which was hugely expensive right for things are back there but you know eventually you know that year we sold about Oh 5,000 bucks worth Wow so I still didn't he still had tons of inventory right and so I had to get a summer job and then try and figure out next year what to do and and you know I started running ads that were you know I thought were really cool at the time but yeah but did nothing their salesmen to ten thousand where were you running ads at that time in action sports retailer and Surfer magazine the local you know free newspapers and stuff I actually read that you you actually mentioned that you realized through a lot of like unsuccessful attempts at advertising that you wanted to create ads and how important it is for people to create ads where the consumer wants to be either right yeah yeah so I was like after three years you know I had the perfect models on the beach with perfect hair and the boots up in you know that much of the ad you know yeah and and you know sales were just horrible but and I was having a beer with one of my surf shop owners and I was telling him this problem he just got shut up right and he closed out the back to these little you know 12 13 year old grommets and they come out he says what do you guys think of ugh and every one of them just went oh those Uggs man they're so fake have you ever seen those ads those models they can't surf mm-hmm and like instantly I realize I'm sending the wrong message to my target market you know and I instantly realized how fake they were there you have posed they were right and so I caught up a buddy of mine who is running this Scholastic surface oshiete this is another pivot you know rent and I said Pete you got any young kids who are going to turn pro soon and he gave me two guys Mike Parsons and Ted Robinson and so instead of the expensive photographer I just went surfing with him at but I chose Black's beach in La Jolla ranch I was up in San Onofre because these are two iconic walks that they're a mile long fantastic surf at the end of it and I figured that you know I want to try and get all the little kids reading surfer magazine' to want to be in that photograph right and I pulled it off and so I ran those ads in October November December and sales meant to $200,000 Wow just because I member those ads create I created an image that the readers wanted to be part of you know and the weird thing is in those ads the boots were like so tiny mm-hmm you know because I went from a long way away the boots are so tiny it wasn't about the boots and that's what I realized a huge thing about advertising you never advertise your product mm-hmm you advertise the benefits you advertise the emotion yeah if you can do an ad where you can get your viewers to go oh my god I wish I was in that scene yeah you've just got a killer ad Wow so if you have it like a software that saves time right right you don't do a photo of your software you do a third year you have it a guy in the Bahamas sipping a mint martini on all the time he's saving all right yeah that's a really really really important part of advertising and marketing and that became my passion when I figured out these nuances mm-hmm that became my passion right from there on so marketing was was what I loved and that's one of the major reasons it's a billion-dollar company today that's amazing now I want to talk to you about the first sale do you remember that first sale maybe when you had the boots and you got to order and you said oh my god it worked can you take us back and walk us through that that first sale if you remember it yeah well the first sales you know those 28 pairs they were mostly I think people who felt sorry for me yeah because sheepskin boots in California is not right no but but a few of the surf shop owners did know about them so that they were the first buyers but what was the best selling experience for me was when I had my van at Malibu the word of mouth was so strong that people were coming in every day and even if the surfers shitty I still had to go there yeah and open the van up because people expect it was like a retail store yeah that was on wheels and as amazing those those sales I really valued because I knew for every pair I sold their friends were going to come back and that was really what began the ugh business was this just this word-of-mouth repeat business and that was what were some other challenges in the early days at that time because I'm sure as an entrepreneur especially building what's now you know come to be known as a billion-dollar business yeah there were tons of little obstacles and and challenges do you remember some in those early days where you just thought I don't know how I'm gonna get through this one yeah well the good news is that that to be a good entrepreneur you have to have some level of ignorance right yes you have to be stupid enough to try is if you knew everything it was coming you in do it there's no way you would do it afraid but that's the fun I look back on those first couple of years that were just chaos like you know sales tax numbers and you know inventory that you had you know it had no idea to sell one pair of size sevens I had to have from five through twelve s because I didn't know what size foots coming in the store all right so there's huge inventory if I don't know how much inventory I had to buy just to sell boots I probably wouldn't have done it right yeah another thing is it had had I realized that Americans didn't get sheepskin like Australians do mm-hmm you know they think oh it's hot it's prickly it's delicate can't get it wet you know but Australians know it it's so you can't tear sheepskin it's so tough you get it wet you wash it you put them on you know that's why they were so good with surface you can put them on with what wet feet and it wicks the moisture out and insulates at the same time and but it but it it breathes so you can't sweat in it right but you can go out at minus 20 degrees with no socks on and it insulates so you know sheepskins got this most amazing properties right no Americans knew that so that was probably the hardest thing that I had to do in building the business was educate and it took me a couple of years before I realized I had to educate what were some breakthroughs that you realized in terms of how to educate right so for example say there's entrepreneurs listening of this and maybe their product requires educating their market but they can't necessarily do it through advertising right um how did you do that or what are some teacher I remember the day that it happened I was it was a ski show in Las Vegas and and it been like four or five days we hadn't written hardly any orders like why almost nothing and this woman came by and and she was telling me all about why she wouldn't buy them because you know we sell after ski boots you know but you know we have Shirelles you know the big rubber boots you know and and and that was their answer to winter and she said they'll never work in my my area because the end the two day like all those things I just said and I was so frustrated I said look take your shoe off and put this on now with bet with your bare feet and she did she resisted at first but I finally made a dirt and instance she pulled him on she goes oh my god these are incredible and she bought like 60 pairs 660 pairs because she had a couple of different shops yeah and that was like it was what I've been waiting for because if I hadn't assault anything at that show I probably would have quit you know really but she bought 60 pairs and I thought oh my god it's the it's the trying on its truck so then from then on I had every single one of my sales reps mm-hmm they they were not allowed to talk about ugg boots to a customer without them putting a pair on first so I went one boot on first because once it was on then they would listen but you can talk to your dead you know yeah about them and nobody got it yeah until they feel it they have it was it's the most tactile sensual feeling and you're putting sheepskin on bare feet that was the secret of why it's a billion-dollar brand as well yeah you know not only was the marketing and advertising pretty good but the product itself was fantastic did you ever run into any issues with either competitors or you know any sort of like lawsuits or anything like that versus competitors anything like that all the time and the reason is in Australia the boots have been around for you know 50 60 70 years I don't know how long and nobody registered the name down there when it was building and you know eventually one guy did but there were a lot of competitors from Australia when I started getting momentum you know two or three million dollars of sales they all started coming in but but they never came back a second year because they didn't realize what it took to be able to take returns mmm how to ship fill in sizes right they all thought of her we're just gonna sell a hundred thousand of them we're gone you know it doesn't work that way so it was my customer service right that year after year after year I kept building going out to the stores fixing up the inventory in the stores being totally on top of what every single retailer was doing and and making sure that you if I had five and thirteen on the Shelf in in January I'd take him away and put you know swap them out for different sizes that I knew they could sell all right and so all of that customer service is what really the UGG brand became hmm and these fly-by-night us they just didn't laughs dissolved yeah now how did you know to to prioritize customer service was it that you noticed that there was a little bit of friction there and you said man I need to go out laner you know what what gave you the sense that a lot of these other entrepreneurs didn't have a big part of it mmm-hmm like I told you I was a terrified salesperson yes because you know my only you know relationship with sales when I was an accountant with the used-car yards when I was auditing them and I'd hear the salesman talking about how they just ripped off the last customer and they were laughing around yeah so I hated sales for sure but I didn't realize that you know there's a whole strata of good salespeople right and so it was like after a couple of years I was in a store one day and I thought man these guys just bought eighty thousand bucks worth of ugg boots last season from me and I knew they Keystone which has doubled the price so they made 80 grand and I thought well that paid for all these rents tiny little shop mm-hmm probably paid half of his employees salaries you know yeah and I thought that means everything else in this story he's just profit profit you know and I so instead of being like having sales being taking taking taking now sales was giving and I realized I'm a benefactor of all these stores and so my whole attitude towards selling changed and my whole attitude to being in the store chains like I'd go into a store that owner didn't have to be there I would go over to the sheepskin section and I would fix it all up and I'd get it you know you know I'm pretty oh yeah and it was that was like my real estate now so so I was like vested in making sure every one of these guys were successful and that that also is a huge part of the the you know that your brand your brand isn't your logo and your brand isn't the trademark and the brand isn't the product the brand is what customers feel about you mm all right and this still is applies today in the internet world your brand is what they feel about you mm-hmm and that nearly always comes back to customer service in the long run even in today's internet if those internet marketers that do not reach out for a personal connection with their customers hmm they'll be gone in a year to you Wow now I know you started in 78 correct yeah everybody asks online there's rumors where did the UGG name come from everybody knows yeah yeah it's it's there's a couple of old guys in Australia who claim they invented it they can't prove yeah it's just a name that sort of was I guess descriptive of sheepskin boots and down there you know years and years ago 4050 years ago that every little sheepskin Factory in Australia would sell you know sheep some sort of sheepskin boot but they would call it ug or ugh or ug GS or yes ugh you know all these different spellings and nobody could ever figure out who started it I heard there was one rumor or story that somebody's wife said that they were ugly or something like that as a million rumors yeah yeah I try not to go in the ugly because because we did our best to try and make them not ugly yeah we're different right and a lot of you know traditional shoe people you know would call them ugly but they have a they have their own distinct look you know absolutely yes pull look when you when you know what you're looking for and feel you know it feels an unparalleled compared to anything else in the marketplace so that's a great word unparalleled mm-hmm now okay when you first started getting sales and started noting traction do you remember a year where financially it I mean obviously it was on a nice trajectory but do you remember a year where you should holy cow this is I don't believe it was everything I dreamed of when I started yeah - can you take us back to that time and what you guys were experiencing yeah it was the hottest part of the business was trying to finance the production in the growth and it got to you know that first $20,000 we got we thought we'd never need any money ever again right yeah well pretty soon we had to buy them out and bring in a bigger investor and amended by the amount to bring in a bigger investor and each time it was I I couldn't get any bank financing because year after year I that's a fad you know right yeah that'll never you're on next year and you come back next year ah be able to Safed it'll never be around next brand and you know it got to the point where we're doing seven million in sales mm-hmm the banks still thought it was a fair how quickly did it take to go from zero to seven million in sales probably six or seven years so maybe maybe I don't know yes so it can you walk us through maybe the first five years of revenue starting from zero so 28 pairs the first yeah yeah it was then 10,000 then like 20 then 25 and then we had the big hit in the fifth year which was the 200 mm-hmm so I took five years to really figure it out so I had four summers you know summer jobs yes trying to finance and keep it afloat just yeah and and and back then AG was sort of like a hobby business correct because it wasn't paying any bills right and it was and I tried to get out of business so I I remember coming home from one of my I was working on a golf course right there's a greenskeeper in the summer and I finally decided that summer I'm giving up you know in the fall I'm gonna sell all the product out and I'm done and then the first big storm hit the coast in my October and I got home drenched you know from the golf course and there must have been 25 you know messages on the answering machine hey we need ugg boots we want to drive down now and get on you know that's like oh yeah so I had to make a choice and I raised enough money to pay myself through the food the following summer to make it a real business or quit so I found an investor that you know at this time then that put up some serious money and I was able to pay myself so most of your investors were private investors Chris so what's your advice out there are some strategies that you would recommend for people building their business and maybe running into the same issue you did where banks aren't financing them and they're trying to find investors yeah any strategies on how to you know effectively communicate to investors yeah I've learned over the years like I've been able to raise money you know easily since then but when I first started it was all about me you know this is a great business you give me all your money you know it's going to be fantastic you know and it was all about me right wanting to pay my bills and have money to build a business but what I didn't realize all those early you was the investors have one main concern so how do I get off this bus right right exist I didn't ever seek that out of will want to get off the bus right why would they ask that stupid question there's gonna be so big you know and and it obviously was like it's in the billions I knew where we were going yeah but I just didn't understand the financial ramifications of getting they remember in the beginning I said I understood accounting but I didn't understand money I didn't understand for finance and so there was like a year where we sold a million bucks worth of product right and like in February we're broke yeah Wow I got how can that be I just made four hundred thousand in profit right but it was all you know the expenses of just a previous summer and then buying samples and then doing all the trade shows and suddenly we're broke again so being an accountant the answer is okay well I'll sell twice as much next year right and then twice as much money yeah well if you sell twice as much the expenses go up even twice so you got less money you know yeah and so I didn't understand that part of the business and I wished I had it after the second or third year I hadn't got somebody as a partner who did understand finance mhm and could project yeah like now we've got Excel spreadsheets and you put all you know a plan in and bam it prints out your cash flow balance you well we didn't have that I have to do it all and you know those green green bar papers you know yeah manually and and it was like you change one thing you got to change every you know yeah it's just a nightmare so we couldn't just print out cash flows like that and and it's so much easier for entrepreneurs today right to be able to forecast what they're gonna sell and it'll tell them the ramifications and the negative you know eight hundred thousand in cash or fifty thousand what it doesn't matter what the number is but it'll tell you what you need to raise yeah so yeah that's it that was a big a big learning curve for me and how did you get out of it just sort of figured your way by bumping into the walls or no I just said I just have I would you know work with the investors as long as we could but then we get to a point where the sales are coming in faster than we we can get the production right so I go oh my god we need more money right right yeah and my investors didn't have any more right so it always ended up well let me buy you out you know and make I'll pay you a profit out of next year sells let me bring in bigger investor SEPA it was always bringing in bigger investors and that went right through - how did you manage to get bigger I have two questions how did you manage to to find bigger investors and then second question is how did you manage to not give away too much equity in the process of of finding those investors well the first answer is with difficulty yeah so just through your network you would try to find Esther's network yeah yeah yeah and it's much about giving up you know it was always a balance between desperation for me to stay alive in the business right and then parting with their money so it was a dance and it was different each time but you know I managed to hold on to that you know there was one point where I brought in some investors and I thought that like the deal was we're going to share it 25% each there were three different investors right and it was a pretty good deal at the time and but there was a proviso that I didn't get my shares of my stock certificate issued till I finished up a little trademark lawsuit there had been a company called ughs mm-hmm and I knew our win that and I also became a sales rep for Southern California so that these new guys were going to run the operation or I was going to be on the road selling which worked out fantastic until you know we moved the warehouse up and got everything set up in Anaheim this is where they were and I went down Beach Boulevard to Huntington surf and sport and I walked in and I didn't even get to say anything hey Bryan I heard you saw the business what he said yeah : ordering this morning that said you don't own it anymore I said you kidding me they said that yeah I couldn't wait to get you know I'd get out of there I went to the Shell gas station to the phone booth right Nia what are you telling people I says what do you mean I said well you tell him I don't own the company so well you don't till you get yeah I said yes I do you're my you're my three new shareholders yeah my partners and he goes no you don't get your stock on - yeah so I just straight back to San Diego and I pull out the contract and I read it and I went I don't know in the company yeah you know when a huge depression you know and and it was like I'd seen myself being a CEO of this huge International Cooperation one day right and now I didn't even own it you know yeah and like I was I was probably three or four days just moping about and I remember one night I was sitting on the couch know my wife was on the couch I was on the floor on my back watching TV right the show finished I clicked it off and and I rolled over on my stomach and got up on my hands and knees and started crawling to the bedroom and my wife just looked at me and she's sort of quite know you know she's right you get up now and walk to bed like a man yeah and she scared the out of me you know yeah and it was like I sort of getting up off the floor it was like coming out of a fog you know yeah and I thought oh my god there's so much more to life than this crappy little sheepskin company all right Wow and that's when I next I slept like a baby that night no you know I went back and and told the guys you know look I'm gonna you know sell UGG boots you know I love ugg boots yeah and I you know I had a bit of an epiphany and goose bumps to arrive at that sort of right ya think and so I just went back on the road and you know I got back after the first month and it gives me an envelope to check for five grand I says that's your commissions yeah it's the first money I've ever pulled out of this company yeah there's like six years right yeah and the next month 10,000 the next month another 10,000 right and so it became a period of years where it was I just had this fantastic lifestyle because I was out playing golf with you know the surf shop owners and traveling all across the country with the sales reps you had about 30 reps across the country and I was you know I was just friends with every single retailer across the country and it part of the you know my books very phallic philosophical there's a lot of quotes in there and one of the my favorite ones is is that nearly always your most disappointing disappointments mm-hmm will become your greatest blessings and here I was having lost the company yet I'm living a lifestyle that's a dream and making all this money I was making radio 100 grand a year yeah and which is a lot of money back there for sure yeah and just loving my life you know you you can't really you know nearly always you know I look back now if something crappy happened you know I just go god damn it that's good you know yeah okay so what's good about it yeah exactly yeah something comes up pretty quickly and you realize thank God that happened man I wouldn't be in this situation where it's better now mm-hmm and so that quote you know your most disappointing disappointments will always become your greatest blessings yeah it's interesting really powerful it's interesting you say that because there's also the concept of like you know the quality of answers you produce in your mind comes on the quality of questions you ask yourself so I've never heard that that's really good so if you ask yourself you know what's good about the situation what's the blessing here well that your brain on autopilot will generate the answers wow that's fantastic yeah because thinking is actually nothing but the process of asking and answering questions and yeah why yeah so if you stimulate a question it all by Defiler something today yeah right likewise yeah you taught us quite a bit now when when it comes to building the the billion dollar business that that has now become ugh what do you think was key to its growth whereas you know other competitors or even other companies anything for that mark just didn't get to what do you think there was I do a couple of things I can remember we're doing about ten million in sales and we were huge in surfing and we're huge and snowboarding and skiing and we're huge I'd figured out in the Midwest and back east and Canada that nobody reads Surfer magazine but they all play hockey right right so we are really big in the hockey market and but it was all these fragmented images and I wanted a really cohesive brand so I figured I want to call this product casual comfort as a category right and we ended up going to I'm gonna tell you a little story before I get to that main one yeah okay here's an instance I was in I couldn't get into the mall stores alright though they were just we don't we sell shoes we don't sell those things right every shoe store which is fine now because there's ugh stores and yeah and I was in Chicago at the buying office of Montgomery Ward which was a big you know more retailer back then a big shoe shoe retailer and the guy said you know I gave my best presentation ever and he says why you're here mm-hmm and I went well I want to get an order for the California stores then he goes don't you get it we're the elephant's we don't move till the mice are running around under our feet you know and I instantly got what he meant you know until all the specialty stores were going crazy the malls weren't going to touch it because they're really safe risk-averse yeah so back to my story I decided okay I want to get this cohesive image and I knew to make it work I wanted to be on the front page of USA Today and so I put together this big marketing campaign with a PR firm in Boston and and we practiced it and I had an appointment you know in Chicago and we worked their way across and we the appointments for three o'clock we got there at five to three and and this fashion editor comes running out going ah Brian I'm so sorry I've double-booked you know I got to be on a conference call it three I've got five minutes you know I just you know the presentation was 45 minutes right put all this money like $60,000 into this yeah this whole you know press kit and everything and so I just I just had to pivot again you know I said God what can I do and I reached down in my head my briefcase and I pulled out this Teddy old file folder I had all these photographs of celebrities you know Neil Young and Tom Petty and sting and Patrick Swayze and the grumpy old men you know and Brooke Shields in it and there was a photograph of Pamela Anderson you know on in a red swimsuit I'm on the beach wearing these tall white eyes I like flick by that real quick because nobody wears them that way all right I'm gonna head to Locklear and she goes go back go back who is that and she pulls out the ad for you know Pamela Anderson who she it was a tabloid someone that sent me from England so that's down the name of the paper and the photographer's name and she said you have a press kit yep she was going like in four minutes you know Wow and I just figured we totally blew that you know this huge campaign and anyway the next morning I was in Ohio Airport going back to San Diego and I got a coffee in the USA today and I was expecting nothing because nobody can turn anything around that fast right yeah and you get to the lifestyle section and there's this photograph of Pamela Anderson and the second page was this huge expose on on the sheepskin Footwear and I mystery why and and not only was it just me but she listed all our competitors which like pissed me off right right because I you know it's so hard trying to keep ahead of her but the good news of that was that all of these mall stores near saw sheepskin and shilling as a category and we were the leaders of the category right and had to be in the category so they started calling right so even so it was it like a blessing that she listed all the competitors right because now we were way way bigger than just one little item yeah so true so that started to really sort of launch it into a whole new mm-hmm new area as powerful and there was one other thing I did that helped too I was on a plane one day and this girl next to me is reading US magazine and People magazine and I I'm seeing all these Hollywood celebrities walking around you know Beverly Hills and they're talking about what what clothes they're wearing what jewelry they're wearing I said I wonder how you get eggs in there yeah yeah and a buddy of mine said well you should try the stylists mm-hmm I say well what tell our stylists and he goes there the people in Hollywood that do that you know the hair and drag up in the wardrobe and and so I found a list of them and I sent like a letter to 400 stylist and I said if you want a free pair of ugg boots just give me a call right Wow yeah and about 40 of them did and so I just sent 40 pairs of ugg boots expecting nothing and you know that earlier thing but you can't give birth to adults right it takes time to just say well nothing really happened that first season but the next year I'm watching TV and like all these sitcoms there's people wearing overts and these things and then it's the movies you know Tom Cruise all right you know all these these high-profile you know activist of me wearing wearing wearing these ugg boots and and so and then I I could pick up USA I mean People magazine and here's you know Cameron Diaz walking in Hollywood she's wearing ugg boots you know and so it took at two or three years to cycle through but that was a huge gamble or a yes or investment there that paid off you know what does it feel like for you I know we were talking a little bit about this off-camera before the interview but what does it feel like for you to go back to a young man who is putting on those Uggs on the beach right and thinking like oh that's it - now sing what a cultural phenomenon it's been what does that feel like for you it's unbeliev I just quite often I sit back and think how that hell did it you know I'm so blessed how did that happen I hadn't yeah and here's here's a really interesting thing that I figured out the secret of success and I didn't think of this a friend of mine told me figure out what you can do better than anybody else and then do it mm-hmm all right because you can't help but be successful well I was an accountant when he told me that right in my mid-20s that went straight over my head I had no idea what I was better than anybody else at right but when I sold the company I can remember I was I was at the Country Club in New Jersey of the president of Kinney shoes which was the biggest shoe retailer in the world right and we were going to play golf he'd invited me to come and play golf I remember standing on the veranda out there by myself I'm thinking how - yeah and what struck me is that you know when I started I had no idea about customs and importing and all that but now we're air frating containers and seif reading containers and we got all the best favorable rates and we know everything about customs right and I knew nothing about shoe design when I started it but I developed like four or five styles at my own with all the different colors and hundreds of you know line items rats and I knew nothing about the sheepskin industry you know about the tanning process and the the what it took to get a skin you know a factory to make a pair of ugh bass but by the time I finished I knew I could pick up a you know a boot that just arrived from Australia I could tell if that skin had been in a wet or a dry climate you know from the texture and the markings on it all right and we were buying futures in sheepskin or actually lambskin right because we were a byproduct of the lamb industry we were recyclers of the skins and so you know we were buying currencies to protect the the skins that you know that we were buying where the lamps hadn't even been born yet right I mean I was ridiculous how much I knew about that that's and we knew nothing I knew nothing about marketing remember those first aired right and suddenly now I'm a really really good marketer because I took that on as a sort of a trade or a profession and you know I knew nothing about retail you know the big box versus specialty and I you know the mice and the elephants I knew nothing about that you know you got a crash course yeah and so here I am you know after 20 years running this business and writers at the time just before I sold it and I and I thought oh my god you know I've become an expert I know more about this than anybody else on the planet probably yeah planet yeah and even though you know sheepskin was in the whole width of the shoe industry sheep skins this little tiny category but me being the best at that category was a billion-dollar brand and it's been a billion dollars for the last six years yes they're looking at two billion next year I mean yeah so you know that bit of advice that my friend told me about figure out what you can do better than anybody else and do it we're so true and and I've witnessed so many other companies that have got into that so let me ask you this I'm sure at this stage you've been around so many entrepreneurs and seen sort of different people at different stages yeah what do you think if you could boil it down what do you think is the difference between people that end up succeeding and building that multi-million dollar business or billion dollar business versus those who sort of just fail or keep trying or sort of get stuck you know in your best assessment being in it what do you think is the biggest difference between those who make it happen and those who fall short of that well there's so many variables number one forget about ugh being a brilliant product right it was it was one of those few items that everybody's got to have a feeling about right right everybody has an UGG boot store right very very rare in the planet is there another product out there that everybody raves them they can still remember the day they got them right very few products out there can movie like that so take that away and you've got so there are so many options to get into a new business now with the internet and because you don't have to have a lot of money you don't have to have a warehouse you don't have to have a you know big team you can start up something very small and very quick but the it has to be a viable product or a service right number one because if it isn't going to work it doesn't matter if you spend 20 years at it it's still not going to work so by viable you mean something that actually works something guys I have a value right to somebody else and if you are pushing that business then it comes down to okay how how clever am I at doing it which means the more savvy Yared internet marketing or sales or being a great guy on having great networks all of those things come into play money is easier to get now than it used to be it's not it's not easy but it's easier than it used to be and as long as an investor can see that hey there's an out hero if I put money in number one I get my money out number two I get it out when I want it number three I get it out plus make a profit right there the investors worries they don't give a about the products or how many kids you've got that they are into it for getting money out right so you figure out how to get that but I think one trick that I learned from from a guy mm-hmm share with us I'll share I'll share the whole story right share is the very beginning days of ugh I in fact it was so early we were in the lawyer's office doing the documentation for this loan right and on the table is a magazine called action sports retailer Volume one number one like it was like still wet ink in the very first magazine here and I went oh my god that's that's my market yeah surf shops action sports shops I couldn't believe it and so I went down and met the the the publisher in Laguna and he said yeah you know the the you know we you know the ads are you know fifteen hundred bucks a page or two pages for a thousand each you know two thousand dollars and I just said you got to be kidding we look we don't even have any product we haven't even started yet he says it's not how big you are it's how big you are perceived to be that counts right right and he said that to me and I've I've lived my whole career on that so when when we were doing our first ads the ads were bigger than we were right yeah yeah so you mean the picture the more we would go to the trade shows and we really put a lot of money into the trade show so we look bigger than we were yeah and and years and years later you know if people found out how actually small we were ya said we would never bought it if we thought you were this small we thought you were this huge thing we had to be part of yeah exactly right so so it's not great business but it's a trick and on the internet now it's so easy yeah you can be working out in your garage but your internet page looks like a million dollars it is a huge tall building that you own you know and all the stuff and like good looking and fantastic and right and your product looks great and it on the internet it's so easy now to project much bigger picture of who you really are and you should you should invest a huge amount of money relative to how much you have I want you to put a lot of money into the image that you have because people want to feel that they're playing with winners and so that that bit of advice I got before I even really started 40 years ago still applies today that's powerful pretty cool and then for those who want to hear more about your story can you talk a little bit about your book yeah yeah this is a turned out to be a great book it starts it you know me being an account of earlier and goes all the way through to the sale of the bill this and there was a 17 year period and it's very philosophical I love spirituality in there you know which which surprises a lot of people being in a business book but right there's it's basically a road map for entrepreneurs mm-hmm but not in a bullet point there's no graphs there's no charts there's no this is just boots on the ground hey here's my story it's going to happen to you mm-hmm and so there's a huge amount of heads ups on oh my god how did he get into that and everybody tells me it's a super fast read and I think it's because they're never sure I'm gonna be around next chapter because it's not a lot of disasters in here but a lot of really great stuff as well on there's as many wins as there are losses and it's really interesting but but the book is so successful everybody said oh my god you got to get on stage and talk about this so I now make a really good living as a public speaker you know a keynote speaker for entrepreneurial groups sales groups you know corporations and where can people find more information if they'd like to book you for their events like that my website is is ugh found a you GG founder that's Brian at AG founder or just AG founder calm and you get me there pretty easily and yeah if anybody listening or watching has a company that would really like a really killer keynote talk I'm the guy you know I can tailor now pretty much to any industry and its really I just get standing ovations pretty much all the time because I talk you know from the heart mm-hmm and I'm not quoting yeah I haven't really done everything I talked about I've done in scratch so it's a really really heartfelt type keynote speech and and I love traveling I love coming to wherever you are so so yeah Brian at AG founder calm excellent yeah and then now before we wrap up and ask for your best advice to people I do want to talk about two things that are very important to you which are meditation and surfing they've been a reoccurring theme in your life obviously you were a surfer and that's kind of what led to the trajectory of what became ugh so can you talk a little bit about how important those things were for you and just the benefit that others might might get from their own versions of those things oh sure well the preface of my book starts out with my favorite surf mm-hmm and I didn't catch a wave yeah it was so beautiful there was really small you know one foot waves and and I can remember sitting out there at sunset just just you know and and the wind was offshore so when the way though these little 20 ways would break then you know the spray would come up and it's these crimson gold and you know droplets of water I mean and that I I swear was the closest I've been to God you know when I was in that and I remember just paddling in after about an hour no no waves yeah and that was probably my favorite surf ever so spirituality has always been a big part of me and and I I never intended to learn meditation but I started yoga mm-hm as a health thing and it automatically just the deep breathing and trying to hold a pose and when your legs burning like crazy the heavy breathing starts to make you lightheaded and that's where the meditation right yeah I'm from and so I accidentally found meditation and now it's a big part of my life do you find that it's helped to gauge a lot of your business decisions or healthy business issues it doesn't affect the the mechanics of the decision but it affects your attitude because you can make a decision under stress right or you can meditate which I do and and I can meditate walking on the beach or riding a bike but when you can pull yourself out of the the got to do it now dress yeah everybody wants me ever you're gonna make a decision for everybody I can pull yourself out of that yeah come back and balance say hey but this is about me right what do I want to do right and that makes you make a decision based on real values rather than everybody else's needs and based on being in touch with yourself whether it be working out or maybe going to the gym or surfing or whatever it is yeah it makes a lot of sense yeah okay now before we wrap up I do want to ask for people listening out there that might have their own dreams or aspirations or goals or maybe they're dealing with their own challenges or diversities and have their their own big dreams their own ugh so to speak yeah if you could look into the camera and give them Brian Smith's best piece of wisdom from everything you've learned and pass that on to them what would you tell them and think of it too as an opportunity of what you would tell the young Brian yourself back in the day when you were sorry okay so knowing what you know now that's your best advice so this will be the most powerful piece of philosophy from my book you ready the quickest way for a tadpole to become a frog is live every day happily as a tadpole all right and you may think that's a little trite but that is probably the most profound piece of wisdom that I've ever learned and if you can just attack every day doing the best you can every day with your business that you're gonna make momentum just momentous decisions just every day try and make it better and better and better then one day you're gonna look back and go on a frog you know yeah but the that the real key word there is happily live happily as a tadpole and I'll tell you that you know I read the book recently shoo dog by Phil Knight yes nice okay Nike would you believe that the first five years of sales of arghhhh was bigger than the first five year sales of Nike that's incredible and that's being a tadpole they were a tadpole I was a tadpole you probably a tadpole yourself today just love it live every day happily there's a tadpole powerful now at the end of every game we play a game called first things first okay so the way the game works is I'm gonna list off ten things and then you tell me the first word or phrase that comes to mind for each one okay ready all right so the first word you ready ugh ugh dream surfing passion your childhood really lucky happiness the goal the challenges of the early days oh I know exactly what I'm I say the challenge is critical mmm critical wisdom that eventually growth growth inevitable your book it's it's powerful your legacy to leave the planet better off than I found it and then the last one you ready yep passion passion it's just a love foot for me it's a love for life love for life it doesn't matter what it's in that's just a love for every aspect well thank you for bringing that look to the show Ryan it's been a privilege to have you on thank you so much for sharing is a really unusual interview I thank you guys so much for tuning in and we'll see you guys next time thanks for tuning in to the passionate few if you guys enjoyed that video be sure to hit that subscribe button right now because every week eating is a very best in personal development content interviews and insights help inspire you to take your life in your dreams and make them a reality and also if you don't know how to look between guests same way I have you can check the link below for my top 3 secrets so if you have a podcast or a show or whatever is you want to collaborate with them if you click that link below I'll give you those top three secrets to help you get in touch with anybody and also don't forget that the passionate view is available on media platforms as well so you can subscribe to the podcast and until next time thank you for being one of the passionate view [Music] [Music]

Channel: OMAR ELATTAR & THE PASSIONATE FEW

Views: 43,922

Rating: 4.8999219 out of 5

Keywords: Ugg Founder Interview, Ugg Boots Founder Interview, Ugg Boots Founder, the passionate few ugg, brian smith ugg founder, ugg story, ugg hollywood, Brian Smith, celebrity ugg, stars ugg, the passionate few podcast, Ugg, Ugg Boots, passionate few, The Passionate Few, Omar Elattar, $1.8 Billion, Kevin Hart, How To Make Money, Entrepreneur, Ugg Australia, Uggs, Inspiring, tom brady ugg, oprah ugg, vogue ugg, fashion ugg, ugg trend, sheepskin boots, thigh high ugg, rihanna ugg

Id: gST-JIvHeqU

Length: 63min 15sec (3795 seconds)

Published: Thu May 24 2018