YouSaid · the spoken record

Jake Carpenter

lines on the record: 74
first: 2017-10-23
most recent: 2017-10-23
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

“I had no idea that what would happen with snowburning. I mean, I saw a sport, but I did not see. Sean White on the cover of Rolling Stone twice or snowboarding me in the Olympics or the stuff that's happened and it's been the athletes that have made it happen and we've facilitated it but it's been exceeded I wouldn't even say dreams because I never dreamt anything on the level that we're on now”
2017-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Burton Snowboards: Jake Carpenter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I sure as hell don't take my family for granted anymore, and I do live life for the moment, I mean much more than ever, I mean, I think. It happens through something like that. I don't know why or how, but it does. Or it did to me.”
2017-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Burton Snowboards: Jake Carpenter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know that I could open my eyes and that I could, I was so into physical therapy right from the get-go, and that I could do something a little better than the day before. And, um, And once you get to that point, then it's game on, then it's up to you.”
2017-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Burton Snowboards: Jake Carpenter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“For sure. For a minute, and then, um, My wife did You know, she told me I was getting better. Eventually, I would see these little improvements.”
2017-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Burton Snowboards: Jake Carpenter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I'd gotten the knee replacement, and then I got home, and I was with the doctor the next day and I started seeing double, and I told him about it. He's like, well, check it out, see if it might just go away. And the next day I was seeing double, and I felt really lousy. And I waited until Don, I went to work. I didn't know what she'd been through so much with me. And I was just like, and so I went to Darmouth Hitchcock and they... Very quickly analyzed what was going on, and within 24 hours of meeting being there, they said, if you have what we think you have, tomorrow you won't be able to Swallow. The next day, he won't be able to open your eyes, and the next day you won't be able to breathe.”
2017-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Burton Snowboards: Jake Carpenter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and I dealt with the whole process of chemical chemotherapy. And in the tail end of that, I was in a plane and I had a pulmonary emblem, which really still affects me. And then I came down with that Miller Fisher, that form of gambre.”
2017-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Burton Snowboards: Jake Carpenter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Gonna be epic, and this stuff's not cheap. So I love that, and I would be a liar if I told you I didn't, but it's not the most important thing in life.”
2017-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Burton Snowboards: Jake Carpenter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, to be brutally honest, I mean, I enjoy having, you know, the ability financially to, we're going surfing for a week in the maldives next week. My whole family. And we're going to have a speedboat that's going to take us to the lineup.”
2017-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Burton Snowboards: Jake Carpenter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Selfishly, admittedly, that's always been part of it. And I think that we're doing a great job and we're humming along. If we were really struggling, it might be more appropriate for me to look at that more seriously.”
2017-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Burton Snowboards: Jake Carpenter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I for a long time, if people would ask me that question, I would say, well, I think I become a couch potato and just eat chips and watch sports center, you know? You know, snowboard plenty, but I mean, it's the best job in the world. Why would I ever walk away from it?”
2017-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Burton Snowboards: Jake Carpenter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Beyond trusting, you have to let him screw up. and live with it and live through mistakes. And if they repeat the mistakes, then that's not a good sign. Burton's made every mistake in the book, but I don't think we've made too many twice.”
2017-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Burton Snowboards: Jake Carpenter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know that couldn't be more true, but less and less and less every year. I mean, I did every job in that company. I mean, I made the first board. And for a while there, I mean, we might have had fifty employees, and I was convinced, not in a bragging way, but I could do anybody's job better than they could. But that's not the case anymore. You know, we've got engineers now that I don't even have a hard time having a conversation with them. But I got better at it and I had the sense to surround myself with people that were better at things than I am, that I'm not good at. That's been good and I've learned to delegate. That's not an easy thing to learn how to do, especially when you're detail-oriented, to learn to let go like that.”
2017-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Burton Snowboards: Jake Carpenter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“any of that fear based stuff? Well, I think I hired many of the people that were in and around it, and I think that we were all responsible to a certain extent. I mean, I don't think that's ever been a tactic that I've used, hopefully, but I certainly let it happen under my nose.”
2017-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Burton Snowboards: Jake Carpenter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I mean, you're not happy when... You're being managed by fear or you instill fear in yourself that you're going to lose your job. It's just you need to make people. People have to understand when and why stuff happens.”
2017-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Burton Snowboards: Jake Carpenter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think a lot of people would blame other people for things, negative things that were happening, and there would be finger pointing and the culture at our company was messed up. And at the same time, I felt there were no women in our top management, and that just felt wrong to me. So I got in there and Donna came along with me, and at that level, we were running the company, and I brought her and sort of specifically to help with the culture and get more women in leadership positions at Burton.”
2017-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Burton Snowboards: Jake Carpenter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, exactly. You know, it's always been a youth driven mark and it's kids. I mean, people would buy two or three snowboards a year. Then you look at Italy or Spain, two very big markets for us, and the unemployment rate amongst people under 20 was 50%. It was a very tough time. And through this process of this crisis, and I think it's not unique to Burton, our company culture kind of got destroyed.”
2017-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Burton Snowboards: Jake Carpenter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, the bank charged us four million dollars to change one paragraph in our loan agreement, which was called a covenant when you're borrowing money, your earnings had to represent a certain ratio compared to how much money you were borrowing. And we slipped on that one because it was a very tough year. And we weren't losing money. We were making money, but literally they said, oh, well, you broke this covenant, so you're going to pay a $4 million fee. And that boy, I mean, we had to lay people off. We weren't making the money that we had been.”
2017-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Burton Snowboards: Jake Carpenter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, she came and went and then she was even CFO for a while. This is in the early days. And then when we had kids, she backed off some. She wasn't working as much then. And then when the financial crisis hit, which was really rugged. The big one Lehman Brothers, all that crap.”
2017-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Burton Snowboards: Jake Carpenter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's pretty much the I mean, if it snows over two feet, it's an automatic day off for the whole company. And last year there were three of those days, which is almost too nice. I mean, I like people to work too. But people come in late and work late. You know, people work hard there. So that's as long as people are giving us a solid effort, I get it if they want to get up there and catch a few runs on a great day.”
2017-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Burton Snowboards: Jake Carpenter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Our meetings, you know, you look. Chairs and a coffee table, and there's no desk. And our senior conference room where we have our board meetings at sofas. You can throw your feet up and bring your dog to work. And we've got 132 registered dogs. We sort of keep track of the number. And it resembles snowboardings, lifestyle. And we're a tribe. And we are so focused on the sport, everybody in that, you know, damn near everybody in that company snowboards. And because that's our source of energy, that's where you recharge your batteries.”
2017-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Burton Snowboards: Jake Carpenter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not a good sign, right? And then they proceeded to have the racing thing was hard conditions. And they decided it was a driving rainstorm. And they say, okay, we can't have the men's down. We would never have this prestigious ski event in a rainstorm. But no, the snowboarders, they can go. They can get risk life and limb and not be wearing goggles. It's raining so hard. And so, but nonetheless, they've gotten better and they're doing it better and better job and the American arm, it's a form of national associations. They care about the sport and they've got some people that care about the sport and they're trying to do better. But the last two Olympics, the venues, for the freestyle stuff, which is what people care about for the half pipe and slokesty, the venues have been really sketchy.”
2017-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Burton Snowboards: Jake Carpenter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then I go to the Olympics, we've got our team there, and I get to the venue, and they've got snowboarding misspelled at the venue. Well, you spell it with a W snowboarding, but they had SNOFEN boarding. This is in Nagano, Japan. I was like,”
2017-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Burton Snowboards: Jake Carpenter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, Fis, which is an international ski federation, it's a Swiss, you know, whatever governmental body. I'm controlled, scene, and then they started having snowboard competitions when they just said, aside from their ski races, and we were wondering what they were up to. And then they just arbitrarily decided, okay, snowboard's going to be in the Olympics. I mean, they didn't even give me a phone call. They never told us anything. I will take credit for pioneering the sport. And you would think that you might Pick up the phone and tell that person what you're up to, or how do you think we should do this? None of that. They just arbitrarily, it's like the baseball player that finds out he's traded when he reads in the newspaper.”
2017-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Burton Snowboards: Jake Carpenter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And, like, just am I doing the right thing here? And so I went and I met with a couple of big New York investment banking firms, and I just couldn't deal the vibe. It just was like, this is nuts. And then all of a sudden Ride Stock, which was at $35 at the time, went down to two bucks because they had these expectations that like Wall Street, just they take things and they project unrealistic expectations. So ultimately people have realized working for a privately held company has many, many advantages.”
2017-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Burton Snowboards: Jake Carpenter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was huge, and this kid was a millionaire all of a sudden, and I felt this enormous amount of pressure, like on taking care of my people. Yeah.”
2017-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Burton Snowboards: Jake Carpenter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Competing storeing company, and he went to work for them, and then they went public and at a very low price. And the stock went up to, it split and then went up to $35. So it was up to 70 on a non-split basis. So this valuation.”
2017-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Burton Snowboards: Jake Carpenter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, interestingly, there was this one company called Ride, and they started out, and then a guy that worked for us went to work for them, and he was sort of a mid-level manager for us.”
2017-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Burton Snowboards: Jake Carpenter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Bail, and then we go to a bigger bank, and then a bigger bank, and then we borrow, we still borrow some working capital, but it has become less and less.”
2017-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Burton Snowboards: Jake Carpenter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We needed the money to make the snowboards because in this industry in skiing, we didn't start this, but you shipped them the stuff in whatever, August, September, and then you don't get paid until December or January. So it was always working capital. We've never needed long-term debt, but we've always had this need for working capital. And so we would work with these Vermont banks and we'd get up to a certain level. This happened like three times. And then we'd get to a certain level and they say, you know, this may be a fad. We're going to bail. And never because we were late on a payment or religious about. Paying people money that we owed them, but they just sort of figured, you know, this has been a good ride. We're going to.”
2017-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Burton Snowboards: Jake Carpenter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and ultimately we were borrowing money from banks, but it was very secured, and then we would get bigger and bigger, and obviously we're doubling our sales, so we're doubling the money that we need from the bank. And you needed the money. You needed the money.”
2017-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Burton Snowboards: Jake Carpenter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, it was always like in the early days was a rivalry between Burton Simms, but we've doubled the number of snowboards sold for the first twenty years, I think, of the company. So Sims was a threat at 1.K2 was somewhat of a threat. They got more aggressive earlier on. But no, we've been. We've been the number one manufacturer of snowboards since the day I, you know.”
2017-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Burton Snowboards: Jake Carpenter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, by the time they started making them, we were maybe on a third of the resorts and they didn't want the sport to happen, right? I mean, these ski companies did not want snowbringing to succeed. So snowboarders didn't like ski companies. I mean, people did perceive them as not being the real deal. And we didn't keep that a secret. I mean, we made it pretty damn clear that we were the real deal. But they did have manufacturing ability, and some of those French and Austrian companies were subsidized by their governments to keep their factories going. So from a cost perspective, they were lower cost producers for a minute there. But it was just, they were too late. They missed the boat.”
2017-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Burton Snowboards: Jake Carpenter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Could have destroyed us, and there were all these rumors that some ski company is going to start making in them, and they went from being, you know, fly in the windshield of the ski industry to all of a sudden... We became a threat”
2017-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Burton Snowboards: Jake Carpenter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's just so funny that the ski companies were so oblivious to what was going on in front of their eyes. I mean talk about close minded, you know.”
2017-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Burton Snowboards: Jake Carpenter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because you're all of a sudden not only give this advertisement, but you've got the coolest and the best guy who can do all this cool stuff. You've got kids seeing this, and they're like, Well, I want to try this, and I guess Burton's the way to go because this guy uses Burton.”
2017-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Burton Snowboards: Jake Carpenter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, well, for a minute there, these kids that had worked for me just happened to be the best. And then there was a rider, Craig Kelly, who actually rode for this company Sims, who started making snowboards after we did, but they were pretty well known skateboard company. And this guy, Craig Kelly, wrote for them, but we were good friends, and I'd always told Craig, if you ever had the opportunity, we would love for him to ride for us. And then Sims ultimately sold his company to a bigger skateboard company. And so we cut a deal and he wrote for me and I paid him $17,000 a year. And this guy was, Craig Kelly was a godsend.”
2017-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Burton Snowboards: Jake Carpenter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Paranoia about getting sued. And so that was their fear, but they ultimately would give us a chance, and we would lobby with them and their kids sometimes helped. And we would lobby resorts. And then if a big resort like we got on Strat and then Bromley had to come along in Magic Mountain, it took years, but there was no stopping it.”
2017-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Burton Snowboards: Jake Carpenter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's in southern Vermont, and this guy broke in his leg because of some sign or something skiing, and he sued the mountain, and I think he tried to get half a million and he got a million dollars. So there was this liability. There's this just feebly.”
2017-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Burton Snowboards: Jake Carpenter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, it was actually a famous case at Stratton, which was a resort, one of the first resorts led us on where this guy had.”
2017-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Burton Snowboards: Jake Carpenter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that would have been early 80s. And part of that time thing, the worst new sport was they said it was more about raging hormones. And this was these rebellious young men. were making it happen and then some cool girls very courageous women got into it and started doing it and I realized okay we're not gonna lose any more money we might not make money but I can you know manage manage this financially so it just grew and grew and grew but at a manageable pace”
2017-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Burton Snowboards: Jake Carpenter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A defining moment in the context of the sport blowing up. I mean, there were big milestones along the way. I think time was quoted as calling it the worst new sport.”
2017-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Burton Snowboards: Jake Carpenter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I mean, in terms of the sport or my company, I mean, it was nothing. I think in the now in the context of starting a business, people think of internet companies that just explode in day one. And there just was not.”
2017-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Burton Snowboards: Jake Carpenter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Top of the mountain But it was so challenging to ride those boards. People now, they have these vintage races and they get on old snowboards and I, for the life of me, don't get it. I mean, it's hard. But it was just these young, rebellious. I mean, what snowboarding and Burton did is we revolutionized winter life. And this was the beginning of it.”
2017-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Burton Snowboards: Jake Carpenter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Total it. Yeah, they would just help me get the boards out the door. This one resort Bromley, you could drive up to this village that was quarter of the way up the mountain. So we would pile into the car, drive up to the village. Everybody would, if there were four of us, one guy would stay in the car, the other three would snowboard down the hill, and then we'd meet at the bottom and do it again and again. And then ultimately, snowcat drivers would give us rides. Bribe Snowcat drivers with six pack or something.”
2017-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Burton Snowboards: Jake Carpenter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, that wasn't the intent. It was like a low-cost alternative to skiing. But then these kids, who then I started hiring more kids, this is maybe year three.”
2017-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Burton Snowboards: Jake Carpenter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, but it was presented I mean skiing at the time was twenty bucks a day and it was a lot of money, so this was an opportunity to express yourself and have fun at and do with friends and it was a cheap way to have a lot of fun when there's snow underground. You could not go on a resort, and to be honest, I didn't start it as a resort thing.”
2017-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Burton Snowboards: Jake Carpenter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“advertising placing ads and these ski, surf or skateboard mags. I mean, I remember going to check the mailbox because dealers really weren't that interested in stores. And so we would send out these brochures right from year one. We had brochures and we would send them out with a little mail order form in it. And now we go to get the mail every day. And I remember looking at the mailbox and it would be like either nothing or a couple of envelopes or some days there would be five or six envelopes. And then you'd open up the thing and it had this crew of the order form and you could get it. You'd open up the envelope and it would be, you know, two t-shirts or something. And then you'd open up an envelope and it would be like four snowboards for a family in Connecticut. I mean, I can remember it so clearly.”
2017-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Burton Snowboards: Jake Carpenter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“First year was three hundred or three hundred fifty, second year was seven hundred. I remember one day in that second winter of selling and packing up the seven hundredth board and thinking. Wow, that's you know, that's overdoubling.”
2017-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Burton Snowboards: Jake Carpenter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, they're not fully assembled or boxed, but yeah, they're pretty much done. And so I had one high school kid helping me out part time, and that was it.”
2017-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Burton Snowboards: Jake Carpenter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. And I am like, I'm an emotional guy, you know, having lost people. Always So I had to let go of my two relatives and my friend very quickly, and it became back. In that first winter, I don't know what we made, a thousand or fifteen. We made enough for three years.”
2017-10-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Burton Snowboards: Jake Carpenter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT