YouSaid · the spoken record

Brian Smith

lines on the record: 98
first: 2026-06-01
most recent: 2026-06-01
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“It was 100% attributable to perseverance. That's all I can say And again, I had that vision behind me of the Australian acceptance of the product. So I just was happy with the mantra that it can't be the product. It's got to be me. What can I do to fix this? And just having that attitude when I came to every sort of obstacle. And so when I walk through an airport in the winter and somebody walks past wearing ugbits, I always look around to see if it's got the ug label on the back, you know? And I get such a kick out of seeing them randomly on the streets. So, in that part, I feel extremely lucky, and some part of me surviving and building it is something that I knew that it could be.”
2026-06-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UGG: Brian Smith. How an epiphany, surfers, and $500 launched an iconic sheepskin footwear company. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And the theme of that book was you can't give birth to adults, right? Every entrepreneur has this aha moment, which is a conception, and then they take some action, which is the birth, right? So for me buying six pairs of samples was the birth of Ug. But then every business just goes into this horrible infancy and it just lies there. But if you can keep feeding it and keep it alive, it'll hit the toddling stage, which is really cool because magazines are running articles about your product and all your true reliever friends are telling their friends. And that's a pretty cool phase. And that goes from toddling into youth, which to me is the best phase of every business because production's working, accounting and admin's working. Everything's working. And you can run a 10, 15, 20 million dollar company in that youth phase. And if it's a great product or a great service, it'll hit the team.”
2026-06-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UGG: Brian Smith. How an epiphany, surfers, and $500 launched an iconic sheepskin footwear company. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, especially after it's coming up on another two years, it'll be 50 years, I think. Two or three years. And I am just blown away at the longevity of it. The fact that it's in the 2 billion range now for a couple of years. And a lot of people ask me if I resent the fact that I don't own it anymore. It couldn't be more opposite. In fact, after all of this, I wrote a book called The Birth of a Brand.”
2026-06-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UGG: Brian Smith. How an epiphany, surfers, and $500 launched an iconic sheepskin footwear company. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Those two things coincided to make us like break through the hundred million dollar barrier and the 200 million 500 million and that combination is what really built deckers into the billion dollar Ug brand.”
2026-06-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UGG: Brian Smith. How an epiphany, surfers, and $500 launched an iconic sheepskin footwear company. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“After they did the acquisition, they immediately hired a guy who had come out of a company called LA Gear. And he tried to turn the brand into a street cool product. He lasted less than a year, and then they brought in a young lady called Connie Rishwain, who had spent time in a lot of the New York high fashion footwear industry. And she's the one that started advertising in the really, really high-end women's fashion mags. That teamed up with the fact that we'd sent boots to Oprah and she ordered pairs for her staff and everything. If we had announced that Oprah was wearing our shoes or boots, it would have killed the company when I owned the company because I didn't have the capital to build the product to take on that demand. That in conjunction with Connie Rishwain, who knew New York fashion.”
2026-06-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UGG: Brian Smith. How an epiphany, surfers, and $500 launched an iconic sheepskin footwear company. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, he turned out to be a great ploy for getting into the mail, you know, the guys who are on TV every weekend watching football. And that move with Tom Brady I thought was a brilliant stroke to bring people back to just the fact that males do wear these products.”
2026-06-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UGG: Brian Smith. How an epiphany, surfers, and $500 launched an iconic sheepskin footwear company. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They offered me the position of VP of marketing, but... Alan took me aside and said, Brian, you don't have a political bone in your body. So if you join this public company, you're going to get chewed up and spat out. And so he was the one that made me see that, yeah, I'd be better off as a consultant. And so I worked for two seasons with them, just helping with their marketing and sales.”
2026-06-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UGG: Brian Smith. How an epiphany, surfers, and $500 launched an iconic sheepskin footwear company. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I pulled up Alan and I said, Alan, we have this opportunity to sell the company. A really good guy. He's honorably screw us around. I'd like to start negotiation or have the accountants start negotiating on one condition that Chuck Kaiser is never, ever allowed to speak to anybody in this deal. And Alan went along with that, and it took us, I think, from February is when we met in Atlanta. It probably took October, November to finish all the due diligence and have the actual transaction consummated.”
2026-06-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UGG: Brian Smith. How an epiphany, surfers, and $500 launched an iconic sheepskin footwear company. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Just through this, and because of that, they did an IPO. And I knew that they were sitting on about 25 to 30 million dollars in cash. When I saw Doug in Atlanta, right? And I walked up to him and we hired fived each other. Because we'd seen each other going in and out of surf shops for like 10 years, right? We joked about selling out to each other in the past. And I said, Doug, if ever we're going to do it, now's the time. That afternoon we had the accountants back in California talking to each other and suggesting meetings to start the due diligence on selling the company.”
2026-06-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UGG: Brian Smith. How an epiphany, surfers, and $500 launched an iconic sheepskin footwear company. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And in the very early 90s, the outdoor market took off and Tiva went with that. They went from like 16 million to 60 million”
2026-06-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UGG: Brian Smith. How an epiphany, surfers, and $500 launched an iconic sheepskin footwear company. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And he parlayed his business into licensing different brands like surf brands and stuff. And he eventually took on the license for Tiva Sandals.”
2026-06-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UGG: Brian Smith. How an epiphany, surfers, and $500 launched an iconic sheepskin footwear company. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The very beginning. I think the show was in January or February. And I'm going to backtrack. Do you remember when I was in the parking lot at Malibu selling ug boots?”
2026-06-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UGG: Brian Smith. How an epiphany, surfers, and $500 launched an iconic sheepskin footwear company. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I didn't really want to have to deal with Chuck anymore. And so this weird serendipitous thing happened. It was a goosebump moment again, right? I was in the baggage claim area at Atlanta Airport. I was going to the super show, which was one of the biggest sporting goods shows in the country at the time. And way up the other end of the hall, I saw a friend of mine. His name was Doug Otto.”
2026-06-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UGG: Brian Smith. How an epiphany, surfers, and $500 launched an iconic sheepskin footwear company. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I'm going to open up here. I don't really talk about this so much. I had a different pressure on me this year. Chuck Kaiser had sort of turned out to be a bit of a sociopath and was a very narcissistic person and he started to create such chaos within the company that I spent most of my time fighting him versus going out and marketing and selling the product.”
2026-06-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UGG: Brian Smith. How an epiphany, surfers, and $500 launched an iconic sheepskin footwear company. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not really because the UG brand was so powerful that anything else was called a fake ug. Like kids would not wear them to school if they didn't have the UG brand on them.”
2026-06-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UGG: Brian Smith. How an epiphany, surfers, and $500 launched an iconic sheepskin footwear company. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I could see it coming so clearly. In fact, the preseason orders for the January, February, March period, looked like the company was going to be destined for 18 million, maybe even $20 million.”
2026-06-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UGG: Brian Smith. How an epiphany, surfers, and $500 launched an iconic sheepskin footwear company. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and I'll give you a good example of that. One of my best surf shops, it was pretty hardcore surf shop in Homosa Beach in LA, said this grandmother drove into the shop because they had ugs on the big banner outside. And she ordered eight pairs for all her grandchildren. And she said she'd never heard of the brand before, but Rush Limbaugh said she had to do it, right? So we substituted really good fashionistes who loved the product for these people who'd never even heard of it.”
2026-06-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UGG: Brian Smith. How an epiphany, surfers, and $500 launched an iconic sheepskin footwear company. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And Snaple had gone into the millions to the hundreds of millions, and they were wanting to jump on board. So effectively our switchboard shut down for the entire season. We had to create new phone numbers and we sent them out the phone numbers to our best retailers and said, you're going to have to fax the orders in.”
2026-06-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UGG: Brian Smith. How an epiphany, surfers, and $500 launched an iconic sheepskin footwear company. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That was Ridiculously big, yeah. And what happened was that because the board voted for it, I didn't want to fight him. I said, okay, I'm on the team, right? So I'm going to go there. I'm going to introduce the Ugboots to Rush Limbaugh. And I said, here, try this. No, I don't need to try it on. And I had a bit of a fight with him. I said, well, look, if you don't try him on, we know it's not going to do the advertising. And I was bullshitting because I had to make this deal. And eventually he tried the mine and he goes, oh my God, these are so comfortable. I could sell these. He's so fast forward. It's now November. That second our switchboard shut down because every broker in the country, every stock broker was calling us saying, are you guys public? Can we buy stock? Can we buy? Because they'd seen what had happened to Snapple.”
2026-06-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UGG: Brian Smith. How an epiphany, surfers, and $500 launched an iconic sheepskin footwear company. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it was much more selfish than that. Alan was a Rush Limbaugh groupie. He wanted to be in the audience in the front row with Rush Limbaugh”
2026-06-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UGG: Brian Smith. How an epiphany, surfers, and $500 launched an iconic sheepskin footwear company. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He was just not a fashion icon. He was a hard right winger and very polarizing. You know, we'd spent years building up this image of casual comfort and fashion and everything. And so I really fought it, but I was outvoted at a board meeting.”
2026-06-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UGG: Brian Smith. How an epiphany, surfers, and $500 launched an iconic sheepskin footwear company. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I'd made an appointment with the USA Today fashion editor. And by the time we arrived at her office, she double booked and we only had like five minutes to make a pitch. I pulled out a little folder that I had full of celebrities. One of those photographs was Pamela Anderson on the set of Baywatch, and she was in a red swimsuit with tall white ug boots. And she took the name of the photographer and the name of the magazine. And the next morning on the lifestyle section, there was a photograph of Pamela Anderson. And the whole internal next page was this expose on sheepskin and shearing in fashion. And I don't know where she got her information from overnight, but she did a tremendous job in creating this category.”
2026-06-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UGG: Brian Smith. How an epiphany, surfers, and $500 launched an iconic sheepskin footwear company. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I found a mailing list of stylists in Hollywood and sent a letter to them. And about 400 people responded. And so I sent them all a pair of ug boots. No questions asked. And it was a couple of months before I started seeing them on celebrities. But the biggest thing that came out of that was that I started looking at people magazine and us magazine bit by bit. The Ugboot started showing up over and over again in all of the celebrity magazines. So I came up with the description casual comfort. And I said, I want to market Ugs as the ultimate casual comfort footwear. So we had the money to hire a PR agency that I was hoping would take this to the market and make it a much more mainstream product.”
2026-06-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UGG: Brian Smith. How an epiphany, surfers, and $500 launched an iconic sheepskin footwear company. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That worked in the snowboarding industry. It took a long time for me to get back east because I didn't know what the kids did for sport in the winter. And I was talking to a sporting good owner from, I think it was Chicago, and he rolled his eyes and go, duh, they play hockey, you know, and being Australian, I had no idea of the hockey market. And when I looked it up, I went, oh my God, this is twice as big as surfing. And so we started making our ads for the youth hockey players, which were all over from Chicago all the way back to Boston. And that turned out to be a huge market. And the big department stores now are seeing this happen. And so they started calling me to come and... Negotiators getting their product into the stores”
2026-06-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UGG: Brian Smith. How an epiphany, surfers, and $500 launched an iconic sheepskin footwear company. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's the year where we started to get traction in the stores. Yeah, we were huge in the surf market. Then there was the ski side. Well, snowboarding was just starting. And I picked up on that vibe very, very early. So we started advertising to the youth snowboarding thing.”
2026-06-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UGG: Brian Smith. How an epiphany, surfers, and $500 launched an iconic sheepskin footwear company. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not a primary supplier, but it did end up making significant dance into the production for us. But again, we still had to, then we had to finance the factory.”
2026-06-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UGG: Brian Smith. How an epiphany, surfers, and $500 launched an iconic sheepskin footwear company. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Had sued me, and the woman who'd sued me, she'd been taken out of the business by investors. So it was the investors now I was talking to and they just wanted desperately to get out of it. So we ended up doing a deal where we purchased.”
2026-06-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UGG: Brian Smith. How an epiphany, surfers, and $500 launched an iconic sheepskin footwear company. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, in fact, it was around about that time that we, the owner of the UGH company, came to us and said, look, we're desperate, we're not making any money”
2026-06-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UGG: Brian Smith. How an epiphany, surfers, and $500 launched an iconic sheepskin footwear company. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But keep in mind that the new money did never ever want the old money in the company. So that's why each iteration was a new version of the business. A new entity was formed. I had to make a deal with the previous investors to pay them back. So I would do promissory notes to pay them back their capital with a little return. So that I could move forward with the bigger financier, yeah.”
2026-06-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UGG: Brian Smith. How an epiphany, surfers, and $500 launched an iconic sheepskin footwear company. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, so much more demand. Yeah. And so finally he said, look, Brian, I have an associate. He's a CPA. If he can come into the business and look over your shoulder, I'll invest. So as much as I really disliked this person when I finally met him. My option was to keep the company alive and bring him in or refuse him and that the company probably would have folded. So I opted for the devil that I knew by bringing him in.”
2026-06-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UGG: Brian Smith. How an epiphany, surfers, and $500 launched an iconic sheepskin footwear company. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so I had an associate, Alan Greenway, who was another Australian who'd done very well in the hotel industry. And I'd been in business with him in a different deal. And so we trusted each other. And he would been a great investor. However, he thought I was a bit of a wild cannon. And he said, Brian, look, I love you, but if I gave you money, I wouldn't hear from you until you needed more. And he was pretty right. And so eventually I finally said, look, Alan, I'm throwing away thousands of thousands of dollars worth of orders every week because I don't have product. Can you please just give me a letter of credit?”
2026-06-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UGG: Brian Smith. How an epiphany, surfers, and $500 launched an iconic sheepskin footwear company. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it was it only took a couple of hundred thousand to get that cycle running. But because I pushed it so late every year, I needed a half a million and three quarters of a million dollars. And that was the hard money.”
2026-06-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UGG: Brian Smith. How an epiphany, surfers, and $500 launched an iconic sheepskin footwear company. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I didn't have the skill to go out and raise the money like traditionally, you know, by this time there were sort of business plan modules, but I didn't really get into that. I was still, you know, who's a rich person that I know? There was no real structure to it. And so I was always pushed down the road until I was desperate to get financing. Here's the irony. The business didn't need that much cash to run for the season. It just needed the guarantee that the manufacturers would get paid. So that meant a letter of credit so that when they ship their product, they were automatically paid. If I had just had a standby letter of credit for two, three hundred thousand dollars each of those years, because when we shipped product, we had cash immediately pretty much immediately. We were able to pay our bills and we get more product.”
2026-06-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UGG: Brian Smith. How an epiphany, surfers, and $500 launched an iconic sheepskin footwear company. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If I can keep this season together, I'll pay you. And so I signed a promissory note with her. And this $200,000 was enough to pay her note out. And then by, you know, I owned the company 100% again, who would have ever thought that that would happen again.”
2026-06-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UGG: Brian Smith. How an epiphany, surfers, and $500 launched an iconic sheepskin footwear company. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, what happened is that towards the end of the season, I got a call from the life insurance company, TransAmerica, because I made a claim when Neil died back in February, March, and I'd not heard much except they rejected it. I had a lawyer who kept pressing them, and they finally called us and said, look, we've got to get this off the books by December 31st. Can you come to Los Angeles? And we spent a day negotiating with them and we ended up getting $200,000 as a settlement to walk away, even though Neil didn't even have his physical done. So I was super lucky to have got that offer. And in the meantime, I'd said to Della, look, I think I can pay you this amount. I don't have the cash right now.”
2026-06-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UGG: Brian Smith. How an epiphany, surfers, and $500 launched an iconic sheepskin footwear company. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Just like that, his commitment meant that we didn't have a handshake, we didn't have a contract, nothing. He said, send me down the patterns, which I did. And he duplicated the patterns and sent them out to four or five manufacturers. And he cranked up his tannery to full production and started supplying skins to everybody. And it took us about three weeks, but then we started getting the first 2,000 pairs in. And then the next week, 5,000 pairs the next week. And it was enough to keep the UG company alive. And there was product out in the marketplace with UG labels again. It was so lucky.”
2026-06-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UGG: Brian Smith. How an epiphany, surfers, and $500 launched an iconic sheepskin footwear company. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And, you know, I didn't tell any of my staff. I didn't tell any of the retailers that we're selling to that I wouldn't have product to ship. So when I got back to San Diego after the trade show, it was around about midnight. I called Gordon in Australia at the Tannery and I said, Gordon, I'm just going to have to shut the business down. And he was very sad and we hung up and went to bed and then about a half an hour later the phone rang and it was Brian. It's Gordon here. It was Screw George. I'll get you all the boots you need, you know.”
2026-06-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UGG: Brian Smith. How an epiphany, surfers, and $500 launched an iconic sheepskin footwear company. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yep, pretty much. But when I went to the trade show that September, I had no new product to put on the displays. I put all last year's product there. I didn't want anybody to know that I was out of business.”
2026-06-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UGG: Brian Smith. How an epiphany, surfers, and $500 launched an iconic sheepskin footwear company. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He was a really weird guy. He had the mantra. You know, I reserve the right to change my mind. And he was a very difficult guy to work with. At first it was, come on in how many sizes do you have? How many colors do you have? How many skins are we going to need? And the next day was, oh my God, this is pretty risky, Brian. I'm not sure we can go forward with this. And the next day was, oh, I found a guy in Los Angeles to look in on you. And then the next day was, oh, look, it's a family business. And my family don't want to go into there. And the bottom line is I spent like a week with him, but we never got a commitment to finance or build product.”
2026-06-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UGG: Brian Smith. How an epiphany, surfers, and $500 launched an iconic sheepskin footwear company. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so I sent a business plan down to several of them, and one guy, Gordon Jackson, who owned a big tannery in Melbourne, he called me up and said, Brian, this looks fantastic. You know, come on down.”
2026-06-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UGG: Brian Smith. How an epiphany, surfers, and $500 launched an iconic sheepskin footwear company. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I thought initially I thought, oh, the retailers, but when I called my best retailers, they just laughed at me, so you know, you're one brand in 100 brands we have in this store, Brian. Forget it, you know? And then I hit upon, well, how about the tanneries? Their business is selling sheepskin, and I'm a huge user of sheepskin.”
2026-06-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UGG: Brian Smith. How an epiphany, surfers, and $500 launched an iconic sheepskin footwear company. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yep, in fact, it was the best of worlds and the worst of worlds, you know, the best was that I created a black and charcoal, two new colors for the line, which all the sales reps had. And that was right before Neil died. So they were out in the field. And black and chuckle were just kicking butt with all of their orders. And we were getting two or three thousand pairs of orders a week. And I was bundling them and sending them down to the manufacturer going, hey George, get ready. It's going to be a killer season. You know, I'm working on the financing. And it got to be April, May, you know, and I started thinking, who would benefit from me being in business?”
2026-06-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UGG: Brian Smith. How an epiphany, surfers, and $500 launched an iconic sheepskin footwear company. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A business plan, but I got nowhere with the bankers. Friends and family were way beyond that. So, you know, I really was desperate for three or four months on who the hell can I approach?”
2026-06-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UGG: Brian Smith. How an epiphany, surfers, and $500 launched an iconic sheepskin footwear company. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was. These books were just. It was what you said amiss. And I had to try and reconcile everything. And it ended up about 87,000 dollars in the hole when I finally finished the accounting, had no leads on financing for the following year. My supplier at Country Leather had just had three fabulous years working with Neil and he got his money on time all the time. And when I called him up and told him the news about Neil, he started to clam up and he was, I knew he was thinking back to when I was running the company before Neil. And I always paid him, but he never knew when or, you know, the money was coming. And so he started to get very cautious. And I said, George, don't worry. I'm going to do a business plan. I'm going to go out and refinance the company and I'll have plenty of money to start production, right? But it didn't work out that way.”
2026-06-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UGG: Brian Smith. How an epiphany, surfers, and $500 launched an iconic sheepskin footwear company. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I called her up and commiserated and everything, and I said, look, I'll be up tomorrow and I'll commit to working a year for the business to see if we can salvage it. And that became coming off the three best years of my life. This became the hardest year of my life for sure”
2026-06-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UGG: Brian Smith. How an epiphany, surfers, and $500 launched an iconic sheepskin footwear company. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The nicks between the time he called me to get my stock, and that was the very next Sunday, he had a heart attack in this race and never recovered. And so now his widow who'd never stepped foot inside the Ag business now owned 100% of UG.”
2026-06-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UGG: Brian Smith. How an epiphany, surfers, and $500 launched an iconic sheepskin footwear company. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So he finally called me up and said, Hey, Brian, look, you've settled the trademark. Come in next week. I've got the attorneys ready to issue your stock. And that day he hired, we had a life insurance salesman come in from Trans America and we wrote out life insurance policies on each other. So we were full steam ahead. But that next weekend, Neil was at a motocross race. He was a big motorcycle rider. And he was not in good health and he had a massive heart attack during a race.”
2026-06-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UGG: Brian Smith. How an epiphany, surfers, and $500 launched an iconic sheepskin footwear company. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was very, very close because in that three year period I was just talking about, Neil had bought Joe and Paul out. So he owned 100% of the company now.”
2026-06-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UGG: Brian Smith. How an epiphany, surfers, and $500 launched an iconic sheepskin footwear company. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In commissions, and I'm realizing, oh my God. I don't have to do any ordering, I don't have to do any accounting, I don't have to do any warehousing and shipping, I just am doing the marketing and I'm on the road selling. And it wasn't even selling anymore. It was hanging out with all my buddies who owned the surf shops and the ski shops. And, you know, we'd go fishing in Idaho. We'd go golfing in Nevada. It was just a great, great lifestyle. This was a classic case of nearly always your most disappointing disappointments will become your greatest blessings, which is one of my favorite sayings. And here I was like destitute with, didn't own the company anymore, but suddenly I'm traveling the America and making more money than I could have ever imagined at that time. And that literally went on for the next three years.”
2026-06-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UGG: Brian Smith. How an epiphany, surfers, and $500 launched an iconic sheepskin footwear company. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yep, settling that lawsuit was a big step and probably the best advice my lawyer ever gave me was, okay, Brian, now you can sell. Just beat her in the marketplace. But I didn't really push to get my stock right away because a weird thing had happened. You know, the second month I was out on the road after we made this change, you know, Neil handed me a check for $10,000.”
2026-06-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UGG: Brian Smith. How an epiphany, surfers, and $500 launched an iconic sheepskin footwear company. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT