YouSaid · the spoken record

Paul Hedrick

lines on the record: 86
first: 2025-05-19
most recent: 2025-05-19
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

“You know, I haven't, and I but I did tell you what I would have said five years ago. Yeah. I used to not like this question, honestly. I used to be, you know what? It's not look. It's all, there's no luck. It's all life is what you make it. But man, I do have such a greater appreciation now that I've reflected on it, on the circumstances that had to unfold for me to be where I was, for me to be born where I was, for me to have. Had a crisis that I could not have possibly been thankful for that turned me into the CEO I wanted to be that got so many moments that I don't think I ever would have happened that I had no control over and had certainly nothing to do with my skill or will. So I think I appreciate a lot more the way the universe unfolds in mysterious ways, whatever you want to call that.”
2025-05-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tecovas: Paul Hedrick · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm putting a little trust in the universe that whatever it is I'm doing right is going to guide me to those next things.”
2025-05-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tecovas: Paul Hedrick · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I let it pressure me into thinking about a lot of ideas. I thought about starting another company. And I realized that wasn't the right answer right now and that there's two things that are true. One's kind of logical and one's a little illogical or faith-based. The logical thing is Jacobis is still growing. Jacovis still has a job to do and I still have a really important job to do as its founder and as its chairman. But then the other man, the other answer to your question is I have no idea. And I am just getting comfortable with the idea that I don't know. And that's okay. And I think I've never not known. I've never not had the next step. And my whole life, I had the school, the next school, the job, the job, the thing, the thing, the thing, the next year, the next budget. And I don't have that now. And I think that's okay. I'm putting a little trust in the universe, honestly. That's a little woo. Woo-woo.”
2025-05-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tecovas: Paul Hedrick · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Know it's funny, I've literally spent this has been my main focus of the last few weeks and months really has been asking myself these questions, not to dodge it, but I would say that the question I get the most is what's next? What's next?”
2025-05-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tecovas: Paul Hedrick · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“One blind spot that I think I've noticed in myself when I reflect is that it's taken me about three years, I think, to realize that my style that I had was actually really good for the first, you know, seven or eight years and maybe would have been a little bit challenging in these next five years and have been a lot more reflective and grateful, I think, recently. But it took me a while to get there”
2025-05-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tecovas: Paul Hedrick · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, it's been an evolution, and you're right. A lot goes out the door. It's been sort of an extreme exercise and self-awareness. And there are days when I realize my ego hasn't been filled up and I haven't done the things that I used to do that give me creative fulfillment. And those days are hard. And what I would say is it's not for everyone. To be clear, some people should run their businesses forever. Some people need to be told to get out of the way. Some people need to be told to go away.”
2025-05-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tecovas: Paul Hedrick · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I was passionate about the product, about retail, and about brand. And so it was a hard decision, obviously. I mean, my identity has been tied in this business for. Almost a decade at that point, and over a decade now, I realize I didn't need it for my ego though. I didn't. I didn't need to be CEO to be happy.”
2025-05-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tecovas: Paul Hedrick · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I wanted an executive who can help take a bunch of the business functions off my hands. I stopped recruiting for that role during COVID until late 21 when we had sort of exploded. I mean, we'd gone from, I think we did went from 80 to 140 million in revenue between 2020 and 2021. And it was so clear that the company was on a good track again post-COVID. So I was like, okay, here's the time to like address my own management desires at this point.”
2025-05-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tecovas: Paul Hedrick · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think I definitely was bad at first. And I think the whole time I thought I was bad, all of the hardest moments of the business come from people, whether or not usually it was when you made the wrong hire or you had to fire someone. It's the lowest lows of any day. And I think I didn't realize how that I was actually doing a pretty good job most of the time. And so, but I beat myself up a lot. And that was actually one of the reasons I started looking for leverage in the business.”
2025-05-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tecovas: Paul Hedrick · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“One thing I'll say it is part of the American diaspora of style Western has, as you point out, it's had its ups and downs as well. It's been a trend, it's kind of been a jagged curve up into the right in terms of the growth of the cowboy boot industry. But if you drive 30 minutes outside of any city, including the Bay Area in the country, you're probably going to see more pickup truck advertisements. The radio probably turns to country. And the point is there's a huge base that's always there and always has been there. But I also, something feels like it's turned. And when people ask me about, you know, hey, the last few years, it feels like boots are more in trend. You know, my first response is, well, you know, it isn't really a new thing. It's always been around. Maybe your friends just started wearing them in Manhattan, perhaps.”
2025-05-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tecovas: Paul Hedrick · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think we were still serving drinks. Yeah. You know, people lowered their mass to drink the drink just like on the airplane. Know you might remember that was a masks became a politically Charged thing, and so that became a hard thing to figure out. We always wore them, but we kind of stopped dictating that customers wear them at some point.”
2025-05-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tecovas: Paul Hedrick · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think we really, let's be clear we benefited from being a mostly Texas and Southern oriented brand. I think the brands that really got, the retail spots that really got hit were the Northeast and the West Coast.”
2025-05-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tecovas: Paul Hedrick · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think we literally were closed for three weeks. Obviously, foot traffic was plummeted. People were in masks, but people were shopping again.”
2025-05-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tecovas: Paul Hedrick · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It didn't pick up until the winter, really. And basically Q2 and Q3 that year were all just us emailing and keeping live the people who really liked to COVID already. It was just staying afloat. And by the way, the reason we had picked up is that that third prong was play offense and hug our partners. Our partners were our landlords and our factories. And we didn't cut any orders. We kept making stuff. We had, you know, we raised money to make sure we could pay for inventory.”
2025-05-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tecovas: Paul Hedrick · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And we did a reduction in force of about 20, and then we lowered everyone's salary as well. And then I had to raise a kind of an emergency round that summer So that was like the not fun prong, and then the other two prongs were lean in and the other two prongs were hugged the customer and hug our partners and play offense. And so hug the customer was. Let's keep launching our new product. Every other brand in the industry was cutting all innovation, cutting all new launches.”
2025-05-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tecovas: Paul Hedrick · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it was a. Obviously, we had to close the six stores, one of which had just opened, which was such a surreal experience opening that weekend. Everyone's can't get hand sanitizer. I think I had a box of baby wipes in my back pocket, you know, shaking 100 hands. Yeah, I get a frantic call from an investor that Saturday or Sunday saying we got to figure out a plan to not go out of business. Man, then things got really bad, honestly, probably the toughest moment of my life personally. Yeah, we had to act. I made a three-pronged plan that was, you know, kind of realized, hey, this is one of those moments you define your career as a CEO when a crisis like this happens, you know, we had to stem the bleeding. I did have to reduce the workforce. I think we had 70 employees at the time.”
2025-05-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tecovas: Paul Hedrick · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I want it to be fun. We had a very fun internal culture, and I wanted to translate that to our customers. And I wanted to think about all of the things that we could say yes to. Like, could we have a bar in the store that served free drinks? Could we, you know, have boot shines? And now we do personalization in store. We started branding boots last year. Finally, I think we've been able to give the customer what they want when you invest in that. Well, you invest $400 in a pair of boots. You want it to fit right. So, okay, we've got boot stretchers in store. Oh, you want to be able to personalize. It's a gift. Okay, we'll just say yes to you for that. You want to bring your old pair in and get it shined. Okay, we'll say yes to you for that. It's an investment.”
2025-05-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tecovas: Paul Hedrick · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And there was no premium contemporary retail. You basically had independent specialty retailers, and then you had big box retailers, but you didn't have any high street, you didn't have any mall, you didn't have any premium outdoor lifestyle centers. So there was just massive marketplace gap to fill as well.”
2025-05-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tecovas: Paul Hedrick · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Isn't really anything that special about really good customer service if it's still limited to phone, email, and chat. And then I had these theories that there was also a gap in the market. There was no premium contemporary brand in the space, and now we are the premium contemporary brand. And if you go look at what premium contemporary brands do, they grow through retail. Go look at Lululemon. They're the primary example. And I kind of considered ourselves a Lululemon of Boots. You have to kind of touch it to believe it, feel it to believe it, fit it to believe it. It kind of felt like that was our equivalent.”
2025-05-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tecovas: Paul Hedrick · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so I mean, I go back to the original inspiration for a boot, and it was the, man, the cowboy boot is the, it has a story. People have a story about how they bought it, how they found it, whether they got handed down, whether they got it at the thrift store, whether their grandfather gave it to them. And I just think. Kind of thought, listen, this, I feel like we're almost succeeding in spite of our business model, not because of it. And I wanted this creative outlet. I wanted, I had this vision of hospitality for the brand that went way further than the customer experience associates.”
2025-05-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tecovas: Paul Hedrick · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Truth is, I don't know when because we never really heard from them. I do remember a moment. Yeah, so we did about a little under 2 million the first year, 13 the second. And it was coming into that third full year in business 2018 that we were clearly making a pretty big splash. And I remember sitting next to one of the other boot executives on a plane to Leon and him telling me, man, we're actually starting to feel y'all's business. And I said, oh, well, sorry, happy to be in the industry. And they actually said something encouraging. They said, you know, listen, you're doing something right. People are buying it. So I don't remember exactly what he said, but it was sort of a happy hunting. Mindset”
2025-05-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tecovas: Paul Hedrick · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I would say, all right, this is the date that we're going to commit to the overall quantity. And then a few weeks later, this is the date that we're going to commit to the color makeup. So we can buy that leather order. Then here's the date we're going to agree on the actual size cut. And it was as late as possible so I could have as much inventory data as possible and had a constant kind of model flowing. So only because of that were we able to attract eyeballs, convert the eyeballs we basically Got 2 million revenue out of it and broke even.”
2025-05-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tecovas: Paul Hedrick · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, we were, man, there was a combination of there not being any other, I think, Western boot brands advertising at the time and us having a really compelling value proposition. And candidly, man, we had product market fit, and people loved the boots. And so we were able to advertise pretty early and, I mean, think we were paying ourselves like 50 grand. So we had enough capital to test. And it turned into a game of when the dollars had to go out the door for the next order and how much we could afford on advertising that week. And what is our stock level and how much when our stock level goes down, does our return on advertising spend go down and tweaking it become almost like a trading floor? And then I, on the other, while he was managing the spend, I was going down to Mexico every month. And I mean, I was negotiating all the way down to the timeframe.”
2025-05-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tecovas: Paul Hedrick · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I told him, listen, what I don't know how to do is market, it's very clear that we're going to need to learn how to digital market and we're going to have to learn the universe of social media. How about you figure that out? So yeah, we started testing digital marketing very early. We started working with an agency on Facebook advertising probably by that January.”
2025-05-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tecovas: Paul Hedrick · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“His title was, I think, Broad. So we had ended up raising some angel capital. And one of the guys who I had reached out to about raising money was an angel investor out in DC. Brandon had been working for him. So he actually called me and I was, I mean, he didn't know, but I was sort of desperate for help and I had already tried to convince a family friend to join me. I tried to hit up the McKinsey and Bain message boards and tried to convince people to join me. But, you know, Brandon was hungry.”
2025-05-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tecovas: Paul Hedrick · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I had sold my car and bought it kind of a beater and an old truck, old SUV, and I would drive that to farmers' markets. I think our second best sales day of 2015, aside from launch day, was me driving to my middle school in Dallas and selling boots from a table at the holiday market. In fact, my mom came and helped me with the booth. My parents were still living in Dallas at the time. I think we sold $4,000. So, you know, call it 20 pairs at that thing. And so it was just little by little. And I really believed in getting out there in front of customers. I didn't think that sitting in front of my computer and reading customer service emails, although that was helpful, was going to really drive it to the next level. I wanted live interaction. And so I told myself, and once I hired my first teammate at the end of December, I told Him to ass”
2025-05-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tecovas: Paul Hedrick · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was a hard guy to work with for sure for a factory. You know, the reason that we turned it, I mean, listen, at the end of the day, they just want a business. And I told them that we would sell 2,000 pairs. They didn't really believe me, but they were just surprised that I came back for a reorder. And I came back for a reorder three months in. I said, I actually, I'm on track to sell all 2,000 over the four months. I think ultimately no matter how much I pissed anyone off with being an annoying client to work with, we ultimately won with business and doing what we said we were going to do.”
2025-05-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tecovas: Paul Hedrick · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They smell. Oh my gosh. And you can see the details up front. It's what are hard to photograph. So I became pretty product obsessed, so much so that actually when we launched, I actually flew to Mexico. The production run wasn't done yet. I think I flew there the first weekend of November and I stayed there until I inspected every single pair. I personally did everyone and it was rejecting a lot and was, I mean, it took weeks longer than expected. I stayed in Leon and...”
2025-05-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tecovas: Paul Hedrick · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That was by far the biggest reaction we got from people who were in the industry. And in many ways, by the way, being online only kind of worked against us because, I mean, boots are a sensory thing the way they feel.”
2025-05-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tecovas: Paul Hedrick · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, turned it on, sent four or five thousand emails out, and had $20,000 of sales in the first day. So about 80 to 100 pairs, I forget.”
2025-05-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tecovas: Paul Hedrick · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I don't think any of them. Well, it was a very small universe, I will say. It's an industry where everyone kind of knows each other. I'm sure there was chatter, you know, here's the thing that we were never a part of the conversations that really happened the most, which is between retailer and. And brand, we weren't going to the trade shows. I showed up to one of them and realized this is not our place. We're not going to be doing this kind of business for a long time.”
2025-05-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tecovas: Paul Hedrick · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Young, he By the way, I made business cards. I made very nice business cards. And I remember putting CEO on the business card. And my dad giving one to my dad, and he just laughed at me. I'm like, why are you laughing? I am the CEO. He's like, yeah, you're also the only employee”
2025-05-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tecovas: Paul Hedrick · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yep, I hired a really good photographer, a videographer to come with me down to Mexico. So nice lifestyle photography of the boots being made, of the artisans who are making them. I even created a bunch of shirts for them to wear, but we only had like six of them. And so we would take them off the guy who was finished with this step and put it on the guy who was finishing the next step. Oh, you had.”
2025-05-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tecovas: Paul Hedrick · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Basically, I had a page about how the boots were made and told the story of Leon. We were really the first brand to kind of tell the story of Mexico and Leone in particular”
2025-05-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tecovas: Paul Hedrick · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Know Shopify was kind of getting off the ground and they had these beautiful templates. And, you know, I was very thoughtful about the storytelling.”
2025-05-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tecovas: Paul Hedrick · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, I had this almost illogical aversion to pre-orders because I wanted the whole experience of Takovas to always be fast and free and amazing. And so I didn't want to subject a consumer to uncertainty, which probably stupid for my.”
2025-05-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tecovas: Paul Hedrick · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Now I am, but I didn't know him back then. But I had seen their launch playbook and they had created this, actually this open source email gathering tool that I think they had gathered like 100,000 emails for before they launched. And so I found the code for it, put Dakovis on it. And that was just one of the many things we did. Unfortunately, unlike the 100,000 emails, I think I got 2,000. I think I launched with 5,000 emails. But yeah, I was basically just spending that whole six months of the last development time grasping at straws, finding every single thing I could put into the bucket of how do I make sure on day one that this thing, I'm not launching to crickets.”
2025-05-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tecovas: Paul Hedrick · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Listen, I was talking to a lot of people about going to market and getting ideas for how to launch, and I ended up actually, I believe you have the Harry's guys been on this.”
2025-05-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tecovas: Paul Hedrick · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was a very humbling year, I will say. I remember my college roommates kind of asking me for updates and, you know, they like, oh, you quit your job in private equity to start a boot store. You know, how's it going? And yeah, I ate a lot of humble pie. And so I think by setting that baseline all the way down and knowing that, no, I'm like going all the way to the bottom. I'm going to zero. I'm going to negative.”
2025-05-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tecovas: Paul Hedrick · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that happened more times than I can count. And then it happened again because we had to switch the factories kind of last minute.”
2025-05-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tecovas: Paul Hedrick · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, the challenge was I was asking them to spend money on things they don't normally spend money on, like quality control and extra training and all this stuff. Basically, it was always going to be to work with Takovis as a client. I wanted to shift the paradigm with these factories. I wanted to shift away from where do we cut corners, where can we save money on some small material thing, and how do we invest in the quality?”
2025-05-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tecovas: Paul Hedrick · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, they were used to the brand saying it can't be more than $80 because we're going to multiply that by four and retail it for $320, $325.”
2025-05-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tecovas: Paul Hedrick · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, basically today, the way things work is you agree to a certain number of prototype reviews, usually two, maybe three. And I was a perfectionist. I mean, we probably went through 10. I remember going to them on day one and saying, I am not designing an FOB cost here, a cost here. I am designing for the end product to be perfect. And then you just tell me how much it costs. And I'm going to go price it, you know, the way I need to price it.”
2025-05-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tecovas: Paul Hedrick · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To be honest, I don't think the hours were long because there's just not a lot to do. There's no company that's operating. There's no customer service emails. There's no orders to be placed. It's a lot of hurrying up and waiting. And I think I totally underestimated the product, the design and product development lifecycle and how long that would take.”
2025-05-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tecovas: Paul Hedrick · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's not, but man, I mean, I extended every runway I could, even though, like you point out, yeah, I certainly had the ability to raise capital. I don't know, I was prideful. I didn't want to. I wanted to get to a certain point. I probably took on $30,000 of credit card debt. I don't think I even erased for three years. I mean, my credit score was in shambles until a few years ago.”
2025-05-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tecovas: Paul Hedrick · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I got through the pre launch year, and I did. I got through the pre launch year, and basically September, I started running, well, here's the other thing. I cashed up my 401k, so that was not included in that original number. You take a big tax penalty on that.”
2025-05-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tecovas: Paul Hedrick · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, the well wasn't going to run dry until the fall of 15, and that was really when all the major operational costs were starting to add up. And it became pretty clear, it became blindingly obvious that I was going to run out of money. And so I really had this milestone. I wanted to get to launch. I wanted to say I bootstrapped this brand to launch and then I went and raised capital for it. So I got comfortable with the idea of raising capital that year for sure. I mean, every other brand in the universe was raising seed rounds, pre-seed rounds”
2025-05-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tecovas: Paul Hedrick · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it was basically obscure enough for us to own. It felt right to me after a while at kind of the first two letters and the last two letters were the same as Texas. It felt both masculine and feminine. It kind of felt plural and singular. It kind of sounds like a Spanish word. I'll think it actually derives from a Native American word. And so yeah, just a lot of signs pointed toward the name being right.”
2025-05-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tecovas: Paul Hedrick · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it's basically a rock formation within the Paladuro Canyon, which is basically only geologists have probably ever even heard of that word.”
2025-05-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tecovas: Paul Hedrick · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Man, coming up with a name for any brand is so frustrating because it all starts with a lawyer, or at least it ends with a lawyer. And nothing's available. And I had a few names that I wanted to use that weren't available. The Takova's name came from a brainstorming exercise. We actually found... A friend of the agency was a graduate student at Texas, I think majoring in linguistics. I don't even remember. And they kind of used him as a contractor every now and then for naming. And I said I wanted to be a Texas-based name and I want to come from something real. And he basically came up with a list of 10. And we'd been told by the lawyers to pick something relatively obscure. We kind of picked the most obscure one, honestly, but it felt right to them. I would say I didn't really like it at first, to be honest.”
2025-05-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tecovas: Paul Hedrick · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT