YouSaid · the spoken record

Rob Fraser

lines on the record: 120
first: 2024-10-15
most recent: 2024-10-15
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

“When the name changed, that was almost a part of the ego eye attached to like, I made this thing, it's mine. That's where that kind of like left, which I think was really a good thing. So it's like, this is our brand now. This is the customer's brand. This is the team's brand. We're all building this. And I think that's really important for an entrepreneur is to let go of that my mind because you need to be able to delegate. You need to be able to bring in people that are better than you. You need to realize that your job is the entrepreneur, the founder, is to really get the thing going. And if you're the person to scale it, do that as well. But you need to build the system around you. And so that was also a really unique time where I was like, it felt like what I had created, the name I created kind of died a little bit, like that phase died a little bit and we were reborn as like I had this kind of other analogy of like up to that period we were you know we were a caterpillar in the first five years and we went into a cocoon and emerged”
2024-10-15 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Rob Fraser: The Power of Focus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The way that we're referenced in the world for the most part. And there is goodwill. There's not to say that a name's not important. It is incredibly important, which is why we took so much time to figure out a new one. Once we could communicate that message and do that authentically and try to get that message to as many existing customers as possible, we can control the narrative there. And also understanding that this only really affected people who've heard of us. And when we looked forward, it's like all the majority of the growth was still in front of us. So this doesn't actually matter for people that never heard of us because they wouldn't know our current name from a hole in the wall. So it's like, okay, that also makes it a little less daunting. It's like, we have a community of customers here that know about us. We know how to reach them. And we're going to be very authentic. So we actually ended up creating like a little YouTube series where I walked people through and brought them along on the rebranding process. I was like, here's what we're doing. We interviewed like hundreds of people of our customers being like, what does the brand mean to you? We're going to evolve this and we're going to actually like take it in a direction that you now help.”
2024-10-15 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Rob Fraser: The Power of Focus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And our interactions were different, I would question whether or not you were the same person, whereas you changing your name or how you look doesn't change who you are. Brand is ultimately how you make someone feel. And it's the essence of the company. Understanding that gave me a lot of kind of like a much more kind of positive path for realizing, okay, we're changing the way people reference us. And we can communicate this story. We're not changing how we look. We're able to maintain our logo. We're able to maintain our product and everything that made us visually look the way we do that's not changing our mission and vision. That's not going to change. It's going to evolve with our community, with our customers. But we had to change our name. And so once we understood kind of like what are the implications here and how should we be thinking about it, it became a lot less daunting, not easier, but less daunting to figure out we're just changing how people reference us. And thankfully people don't buy our product because we put our name on it. Our name is just.”
2024-10-15 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Rob Fraser: The Power of Focus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Different, it would take some getting used to how to recognize you, but ultimately you'd be the same person, and I would still want to hang out with you. If you came, look the same, had the same name, but were a completely different person.”
2024-10-15 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Rob Fraser: The Power of Focus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A brand like a luxury brand where we were trading on our name as a big piece of the value. This was going to be a big problem. But we were a product driven. So people bought us because they loved the product. The name in that scenario was a reference to the product. And the way I thought about it was like I broke brand down into kind of three core components and I like to use kind of like analogies to help visualize things. So I visualized a brand as a human. And we'll use you as an example. Okay, so you've got three things primarily. You have your name, how you look, and your essence. And so your name is how I'm going to reference. I'm going to call you or I'm going to talk to you about other people. But if you came to me and said, you know, now my name is Dave, that would be like a little weirder. It takes some adjusting, but like it doesn't change who you are, whatever. No problem. We can figure that out. How you look if suddenly you came and had shoulder length hair somehow. And yeah, and changed how you look and look completely.”
2024-10-15 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Rob Fraser: The Power of Focus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So every bone in my body wanted to fight, right? I came from a career of where you're in a sport, you're competitive, like your number one goal is to fight it's to win, right? Not physically, but like fight for that podium spot. Like that's what you're doing. But I had to this time prioritize everyone else as well and think through how does this affect not just me, but everyone involved, like I mentioned. And it was just a lot of discussions. You know, first it started with like, if we do decide to fight, what's that look like? And the quotes I got were it could take you two years per country you fight this in and up to a million dollars. There's the financial and then there's the brain drain of doing that. And so you weigh that against what are the financial and other implications of changing the name. And ultimately, you know, what I landed on was this understanding of”
2024-10-15 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Rob Fraser: The Power of Focus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's the losing mindset. Those people that are doing that are like operating from a place of fear and they're playing more defense than offense. And that's not how I like to operate. I'm much more of a friends in business kind of guy. I think like business is not zero sum. I think everyone can win the markets are massive, especially in the sock space. It's a $50 billion market. But yeah, we went from no legal issues to three in one year. So it wasn't just that one. I got like within the next six months got two others around completely unrelated things as well. And just like it was almost comical, you know, it's just like kicked me while I was down. But I learned how to deal with those things. We resolved all of them. But yeah, man, it's something you just kind of have to go through.”
2024-10-15 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Rob Fraser: The Power of Focus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was incredibly draining, the stress, the anxiety around it. I smile, right? Because it's just like if I think back, there's so many incredible stories and it was just like such a rewarding thing to go through knowing we've been on the other side and we've now under our new name outway sold more product than we did ever as our old name, but like it just was incredibly difficult.”
2024-10-15 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Rob Fraser: The Power of Focus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Protocols built. I didn't know I was going to get burned out because similar work life balance, I believe burnout is the result of working a lot on things that don't fill your cup that are out of line with your mission. It's not from overworking. The common thing is like, oh, if you work 80 hours a week, you're going to burn out. It's not true. I can work 80 hours, 100 hours a week on things I love and feel very energized and excited and you're obsessed with it. But working that 80 hours on this legal stuff, which was completely counter to what I wanted to do in our mission, it was such a distraction and a sideshow.”
2024-10-15 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Rob Fraser: The Power of Focus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Process, and so yeah, it was ultimately the stress of that. But like I said, now kind of a few years removed, I'm incredibly thankful for that period. I just like learned so much. Like the buyout of my co-founder, that was kind of what I coined as like 150 grand. That was my MBA. I learned so much during that process around what is a shareholder agreement? What's the importance of it? Like around co-founder dynamics and values and biotes and the way we had to do everything I learned so much at that period. This was now another learning opportunity of like, oh, okay, we're operating in a different league now where like this is a thing and people, you have to play a little bit of defense. People are going to throw arrows at you, you know? And so that was an arrow. And ultimately, I let the second arrow hit me, which was my reaction. You hit the first arrow, which you can't control. The second arrow is like how you deal with it. And I forget where I'm quoting that from, but someone says that I loved it because it's like, you can choose not to get by the second arrow. And I chose to kind of like not do the right things in terms of taking care of myself. I give myself grace now because I didn't know any better. I didn't have.”
2024-10-15 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Rob Fraser: The Power of Focus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, like when I started it, I kind of just picked a name that I liked. And yeah, we filed trademarks. We did all the right things, but I didn't do any diligence to see if there were other brands using similar names. And so this time around, I had to be like, what's a brand name that could champion a business going forward? We've been in business for five years. People know about us. It's not a massive business, but it's growing. And what's one that's protectable? And you've got a timeline because you've got to personally on the other side saying, change your name by this date or we're going to sue you. And it's just like, so you got a gun to your head and you've got this huge list of things you need to accomplish. And it was incredibly daunting. And this was, you know, the one time, like I had no one else to lean on. Like my team couldn't do this for me. Investors couldn't. I had to do all of it and kind of absorb all of the stress work directly with the like I don't have a like I didn't have a co-founder or an operating partner at that level so like it's me on email chain with all the attorneys understanding all the complexities of it and then figuring out how are we going to go down this”
2024-10-15 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Rob Fraser: The Power of Focus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Changing our name, and that's an incredibly complex process for a business that's been around for five years. And how do you even start that process of communicating the messaging? What is a name that's going to work? And the stress, I think ultimately the stress came down to was not messing it up, right? I had so many people that relied on me at that point. I had a young family. I had employees. I had investors. I had what felt like the world on my shoulders. And none of them were putting that pressure on me. I put it on myself because I told you, I take these responsibilities incredibly seriously. If someone gives me money or bets on me, like I said, like it's my duty to do right. And so I wasn't going to not put 110% effort into it. And I had to learn. So I basically over, like over the next six months, it became quite educated on IP law and figuring out kind of everything and working with the best attorneys. And we found the best people and working through the rebranding process and kind of going through discovery of what is a brand.”
2024-10-15 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Rob Fraser: The Power of Focus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That believes they have rights over your name and is demanding that you do X, Y, and Z in one of those to stop using the name. And so I was kind of like immediately just shook because we just raised all this money. We've been in business for five years. And that was the first time, you know, in sport and in business at that point, everything was something that like I was solving problems that I created. I wasn't battling somebody. I was in charge. This was something happening to us. I was completely out of control on and I had no frame for it. I had never gone through it before. I didn't know anyone that went through it for maybe half an hour. I was like, this is a death blow. You know, like I was kind of like let myself and then, you know, I called you actually. I called a few other people and I was like, okay, like this is not uncommon. But it was incredibly stressful. It basically led us onto this six month journey of rebranding and”
2024-10-15 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Rob Fraser: The Power of Focus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Five years into business operating under a former name, and it's going really well. It's 2021. Our business I said, I started to build a network, and this opportunity rose to raise some money that not only, there was kind of three parts to it, there was a personal security part to it. There was capitalizing the business for the first time, like actually having some firepower behind what we want to invest in, and then also inviting in some voices that I was so desperate for of people I admired. So it was kind of this opportunity telling, you know, a bunch of friends and my wife being like, you'll never get this. Like all my business heroes want to give me money and invest in the company. Like, this seems almost like cheating. This is incredible. So I pounced on that opportunity. But literally, the day the money hit the account, we raised millions of dollars. It hits the account. I get an email from my lawyer that says urgent in the subject line. And that's just almost never a good thing. And it's from my IP attorney, which I rarely hear from. It was our first ever ceaseed assist. And it basically said, you know, there's a company.”
2024-10-15 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Rob Fraser: The Power of Focus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Couldn't do something when my health was in a poor spot about two years ago going through the thick of it. That was one time where I was like, I don't know if I can do this much longer. Like if I don't get better, I honestly don't know if I could do this or I would trade this business to feel better because I'm just so sick right now and I just don't want to do it anymore. That was the only period. So that's when my health left. I was like, oh.”
2024-10-15 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Rob Fraser: The Power of Focus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it almost ensures destruction, right? So I've got a protocol now because that's what happened to me two years ago when things were going poorly. That's what I let go. And it cascaded into a two-year event, which I'm sure could have been much shorter. And I just treat it much more like an athlete. You know, if you're injured, you go into recovery protocol. So if you're dealing with a high stress event in business, what's your recovery protocol? What's that look like? How do you build that? How do you build that into a system and follow it? When these things happen, you can't solve them overnight. And so like working extra three hours. I mean, sometimes you need to stay up late. You know, there were late nights because I'm literally on email chains with my lawyers for dealing with stuff. But like that's not every night and that's not super common. And you can, you know, moderate that stuff. Letting your health go is kind of the worst strategy I've found, honestly. Because getting through those times is down to resilience perseverance. And if you let your health go. And when it did, like that's when, you know, very rarely have I ever felt like I.”
2024-10-15 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Rob Fraser: The Power of Focus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Part of it too is like, how can you be a high performance entrepreneur? How can you tilt the scale in your favor? How can you change the odds? And I think your ability to be sharper, more alert, physically and mentally fit is going to do so much benefit for you, especially as the business grows too. The business now in its current stage is much more dependent on me thinking clearly and having good ideas and meeting people and being on when I do that. And that requires me feeling good.”
2024-10-15 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Rob Fraser: The Power of Focus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Going well for me to operate at my best. You know, we talk about work life balance, which is like, I hate the concept of it in entrepreneurship. You know, like for like a salaried worker, like, sure, like balance should be, you know, something that you're thinking about. But in particular in sport or high performance careers or something that you're doing, it's like you need to tilt the scale in your favor, right? And that's by definition no balance. However, I think what gets missed here is that part of the work for an entrepreneur like an athlete is like your health and your personal relationships. If those aren't in a good spot, you're not operating at 100% efficiency. And so that's part of the work, right? What's not part of the work is maybe partying or doing things that you shouldn't be doing that are going to set you further back. But people think about, you know, if I say work-life balance is a joke. People are like, oh, what about your health? Health is included in the work. And I think it's such an important.”
2024-10-15 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Rob Fraser: The Power of Focus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Like demolishing yourself and the consistency is going to be better for sure. I had kind of like three goals this year get the business back to a place where we're thriving and having fun. Get my health back to a place where I feel confident and inspired and like kind of all in on this. And the third one was the more personal. It was just like, you know, I had a new kid. I have two boys and one was born this year. It was really just like, you know, like really focused on the family because I had my first kid during like the real thick of business and during COVID as well. And I really wanted to kind of enjoy the process of this. It was kind of like, you know, family business and health were three core pillars and those things holistically all need to be kind of”
2024-10-15 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Rob Fraser: The Power of Focus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In order to extend the time horizon, I need to be physically and mentally as healthy as I can be. Same with our team. This doesn't work if we're not all operating to the best of our ability to. And the business has been so stressful like any business over the last 10 years that it really took a toll on my body, specifically over the last two years. We had a few very stressful events and I didn't deal with them. I dealt with them well in business, but the rest of my life kind of fell apart and my body. And realizing that that's not a sustainable path to go on like being an athlete for so long and a younger like and younger in general is like I death gripped through life. You know, I was just like, I learned very early with the injuries I rode through is like, oh, you can just make it through this. You can just brute force your way through this. And that's not the best approach always in business, and especially if you have an extended time horizon and longevity in mind, right? It's like the same idea of are you better off consistently working out or going once a week and just”
2024-10-15 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Rob Fraser: The Power of Focus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The thing gives me the most joy is, you know, sit down with our team now and we're talking about the future, and it feels like we're on our toes and not our And that was the big unlock is ultimately just extending the time horizon and being like, what makes us happy at running this business?”
2024-10-15 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Rob Fraser: The Power of Focus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Again, right? Of like, oh, if I don't keep performing and outperforming and winning, maybe they won't like me anymore or they won't be accepted anymore. And then just being okay with like, look, you know, I have to just operate this authentically. And I asked myself, what would it look like for this business to be around in 20 years? Forget about what we grow this year. How do we build a business that endures over time? And that makes the building so much more fun. Like how do we actually get back? I fell back in love with the product again this year, right? Like I love socks. You know, it's such a weird thing to say, but one of my superpowers is I actually really love socks and care about the product. And that comes through in the product that we offer people love them as well because I'm obsessed with making it better. And, you know, like I'm obsessed with the customer feedback around it and falling in love with the product, serving the customer, extending the time horizon and not doing things because your ego is dictating it. That's a pretty good recipe for business success.”
2024-10-15 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Rob Fraser: The Power of Focus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Appealing to an entrepreneur. Every entrepreneur is like, you're just in it, right? It's so hard. And when someone has this new hack or new thing, it's that fallacy of like, oh, that one thing I'm not doing is going to unlock all of my or solve all of my problems, unlock all of the growth. And it's just not true. And the worst thing that can happen is the one time that maybe that silver bullet does work because then it teaches you that, oh, there's hacks here. So I always kind of caution like if you get lucky, just appreciate it. But these hacks typically don't work. What we ended up doing is just extending the time horizon. You know, like I said, I was trying to rush before what reason, though, to it was literally expectations I had put on myself. No one around me was saying you need to grow at X or do Y. It was really me just feeling like I needed, you know, to gain acceptance of people that already accepted me. It was kind of weird. And it was really just the self-discovery of being like, no, these people already accept me. I'm doing what I do. It's kind of that kid.”
2024-10-15 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Rob Fraser: The Power of Focus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Say the number one thing we talked about was removing ego. Let's just not do things because we think they're the thing to do. Let's just do the right things. We need to understand that we can't necessarily change the market. We can't create demand that's not there at our current size right now. We need to be okay with the ebbs and flows and we don't need to when things are not going well or we're in a slower period. We don't need to try and artificially inflate that. We don't need a Hail Mary. You know, silver bullets and like hacks and all these things. They're so.”
2024-10-15 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Rob Fraser: The Power of Focus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of it when it doesn't make sense anymore. Being okay with saying no, which is tough when you're surrounded by smart people, right? You've got investors, you've got mentors, you've got advisors, and of course they're smart, they know what they're doing, but I think it's really important as an entrepreneur to know you know your business best, right? And the advice is there to help guide you, but sometimes it's not what you should be doing.”
2024-10-15 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Rob Fraser: The Power of Focus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Confidence and willingness to say, like, that's a great idea. That one's not for me. Or how do you synthesize those ideas? Because in the early days, I thought, well, these people all know a lot more than I do. And sure, they know maybe it's more about business, but they don't know more about my business. They don't have all the context of what's going on. They don't understand the complexities of simply introducing a new product, right? Like that has so many supply chain implications, marketing implications. Like, sure, like the most common advice I got from people is, oh, you sell socks. Have you thought about doing underwear? It's like, yeah, of course I've thought about doing underwear. But like, those are completely different supply chains, psychologies. Now it's gendered where socks are unisex. Like there's so many considerations, but on the surface, it's good advice. And so I've had to really learn that, you know, advice is welcomed and appreciated, but it's my job to synthesize and actually use it when it makes sense. So to start accumulating all of that and making sense of it and, you know, I've stopped applying a lot.”
2024-10-15 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Rob Fraser: The Power of Focus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Which is on one hand great lessons of thinking bigger and realizing, oh, I am limiting myself, but at the same time trying to shorten the time horizon to try and catch up to these people that I admire. There's just no way to rush that process. And every time I've tried to rush that process, particularly over the last couple years, it's ended up backfiring. You know, like this year in particular, I made a conscious effort to be like no more. I'm going to go back to operating authentically, doing what I feel is right, listening to the vice around me, but filtering it and using it to the best of my ability. And it's going so much better. It's really back in that way of operating authentically. And so there is, I think you have to be careful as your network grows, that you're not trying to compare yourself to those people as much. And you're just gathering inspiration from them. When you're around a lot of smart people too, ideas are going to start flying and it's your, you need to have the”
2024-10-15 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Rob Fraser: The Power of Focus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's everything, really. Let's talk about business or just life in general. It's like you want people around you that are rowing in the same direction, right? Like you want people that have goals. You want to be able to swap and share insights. You want to be able to encourage each other. The power of having like a great network or group around you is kind of a double-edged sword sometimes too, though, because although a great network of people are going to propel you forward and teach you things you wouldn't know, sometimes you start to kind of try to keep up with the Joneses a little bit. So in particular, like as I started to get some level of moderate success in business, my network started to grow. I started to become friends with people that were much further ahead than me. And it almost led to this insecurity, you know, like for the five years before I was building my business, relatively unknown, didn't really know anyone else building a business. I was really operating authentically in like what I wanted to do and setting goals that I thought was achievable. And then I'm immersed in this world where people are thinking much bigger.”
2024-10-15 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Rob Fraser: The Power of Focus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I know you'll figure it out. That was, you know, so important. And she's always kind of been in my corner like that. And certainly the person to kind of bet on me and understand I was different. You know, she understood that like I was intensely passionate about things as a kid. And I don't think also she really had a frame for entrepreneurship because it just wasn't a discussion. Like I had all these little things going. I had my own little bike shop repair. I built an office in my bedroom closet. I was always doing these things. I just didn't know what it was. I was obsessed with the idea of kind of building business. I built bike teams. I would get all the kids in there when we build teams. I was organizing people. We had like schedules. And so I was always building teams, leading teams, building little businesses. And I just didn't know what I was doing was entrepreneurship or building a business. That was just what came natural to me and what I loved to do. And so she knew I was different. So she knew when I was kind of going to go on a different path. She encouraged that, which was.”
2024-10-15 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Rob Fraser: The Power of Focus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I will figure this out, but I have no idea how I'm going to do it. I could not articulate that, which is very difficult for a parent because they're like, I want to believe you, but I need to see some pathway forward. What is the plan, dude? Yeah. It ended up working out. And it was the same thing in business too. It's like, I have no idea how I'm going to do this, but I do know I can do it and it's going to work out. My mom being like, you know, kind of just on the side, you know, being like.”
2024-10-15 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Rob Fraser: The Power of Focus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Mom, yeah. So I went to university and dropped out. So that's like that was a big riff in our family because going to university was the safe path. That was the known path of, you know, my dad sold insurance and, you know, my mom, when she had us stayed at home and it was, it was super traditional, super go to school, get whatever job, build a family. And so the idea of kind of going all in on this cycling career at the time was just like a pipe dream for the most part. And it wasn't really anything yet. It was a big riff. I could tell deep down she was like, I know you got this. I know you'll figure it out. Because what I would always say to my parents at the time, and I was telling you about this yesterday is like, whenever.”
2024-10-15 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Rob Fraser: The Power of Focus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, yeah. Of course. But I had such high conviction that, like, I would do anything to get that money back. If the business wasn't going to fail, that money would go back first. I take those sorts of things like when people bet on me or you know my employees or investors whatever I take that incredibly seriously number one thing you should be focused on is like doing right by the people that believe in you and bet on you”
2024-10-15 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Rob Fraser: The Power of Focus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Act of doing that actually, my now father in law reached out after me. He's like, Hey, look, I appreciate that you were willing to do this, but I'll loan you the money and I'm forever grateful for that because A was a vote of confidence and it was, it just, it allowed me to kind of, you know, push on. And I was super proud to be able to pay him back in a couple years too. We paid him out relatively quickly and the terms were super fair anyways. But it's like, I want to get his money back. And I take that responsibility incredibly seriously.”
2024-10-15 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Rob Fraser: The Power of Focus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Peg is like the real star. That's where I was like, I'm all in because I had to go take out a personal loan to make it happen of like $150,000, which was insane, right? I remember we finally agreed on a number and I didn't have that money. I had student debt. I had the exact opposite of money in the bank. But I was so committed around that what we talked about earlier around just the mindset and the willingness to kind of just go all in. I went to every bank in town and would just, I was like, okay, I've got credit cards I'll draw out on. I've got a line of credit. I've got some student loans. My then girlfriend now wife, like she was like, I'll sign on. We'll get some loans. And I was able to kind of put the money together through all these various, very high interest, high risk kind of funding sources because I didn't want to ask anyone else like, I believe in this, but I don't want to put anyone else at risk. You know, like I'm willing to take this on and put it on my shoulders and go.”
2024-10-15 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Rob Fraser: The Power of Focus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Which is really easy to do because there's almost no great resources for helping an entrepreneur and ultimately to get the proper legal agreements is expensive. When you have like we started the business with a thousand dollars each, right? So put $1,000 in. That's all we had and it all went in inventory. There was no money for a legal agreement or a lawyer. And you're in the honeymoon phase of business. Of course you're never going to fight with your partner, right? Everything's great. It's going to be successful. But once it gets real, that's when those kind of things are super important to have at least a discussion about and there was no discussion. And so he left the business. There was no resolution. And that kind of led into this period of where I had to figure out how to resolve that. And it was super messy. And ultimately ended up coming to an arrangement and buying them out. It ended up kind of closing two, two and a half years into the business and kind of March of 2019 is when he officially left the business and I got full control. And that's kind of what I.”
2024-10-15 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Rob Fraser: The Power of Focus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The common stories go, and you know, it became pretty clear that this was out of line with his values. We didn't have those discussions early on of like, what do we want out of this? Because we were doing it for fun. We were friends. We just wanted to have a good time and try something and really kill time during school. We always expected just to continue with school and kind of continue on. But that for me evolved very quickly into like, oh, no, I can do this. You know, like I really like this and there's a big opportunity here. You know, ultimately over time that tension started to grow and the gap between our abilities to have conversations of what's going on because I was just like consuming knowledge and trying to learn at such a rate because I was obsessed with it. It became very difficult for us to be aligned on what we wanted out of the business, which ultimately led to him leaving the business and quitting true to form. We didn't have any proper resolution for that. We didn't have a shareholders agreement. We just did almost everything wrong when setting up the company.”
2024-10-15 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Rob Fraser: The Power of Focus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“As it started to get a little bit of traction, like I said, I didn't expect it to work, but that doesn't mean that I wasn't incredibly committed. You know, I was obsessed. The second I decided to do it, I was all in. I was reading every business book I could find. I was, you know, like I said, I had entrepreneurial tendencies. I just didn't know. They had manifested in sport for so long that I was like, oh, I found business now. And I just got obsessed with it. The same was not true of my business partner that wasn't kind of his thing. You know, he wasn't necessarily, I don't think he would identify himself as an entrepreneur. So as things started to grow, we were pretty lucky with some early success. The business started to work. In the first year, we did, you know, multi-six figure revenue of just selling socks kind of around town for the most part. The first socks I sold, I just took to school in a Tupperware and hand-to-hand combat and sold them to students, teachers. But I said, like, you know, we're not friends if you don't buy these. And so that was like how it got started. And so ultimately after a year, it started to get real. Like the work required nights and weekends.”
2024-10-15 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Rob Fraser: The Power of Focus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I was like, this would be way more fun with a friend, which, by the way, is like the world's worst reason to start a business with someone because it's fun to do with a friend that I've learned in highsight. But, you know, ultimately what I didn't ask myself at the time, which I think is so important for entrepreneurs and just people in general to ask themselves, is what happens if this goes right. The common knowledge is for people to hedge their downside. They go, what happens if this goes wrong? And that's very, that's fair. People want to protect themselves. And these are ultimately risky endeavors. But I didn't ask myself at the time, like what happens if this goes right? Because if you think about it, and I try to always tell young entrepreneurs, like, what would be more painful? Failing because it didn't work or failing because it did and you didn't capture the opportunity. That would be so much more painful. And I felt like that kind of happened in my cycling career. So, you know, like I'm working really hard now to not kind of repeat that mistake. But yeah, I started it with a business partner and it was fine when it was kind of like just something we were doing. But, you know, ultimately.”
2024-10-15 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Rob Fraser: The Power of Focus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was in school when I started the business. I was in my second year. I just had the idea. You know, when I said I'm going to start a business, I was quite literally listen to that book, laying in bed, kind of, you know, having my nightly identity crisis, some existential crisis. It just snapped me. He was like, I'm going to start a business. I kind of got up right there. I started open my Apple note, started thinking about different brand names and went to school and I talked to my good friend at the time. I developed a great friendship with a classmate. We would do all our class projects together. We actually got a job together outside of work. I was doing some rep work for a brand and I got him involved. We were doing some field marketing. And so we got on well. We're friends. We worked well together and I didn't expect the business to work. I was like, it was, it's like one of the odds. Here's this former athlete guy that's kind of like not particularly great at school, has no business experience who set a goal to build a sock company. Everyone looked at me like I was crazy. Like some people still do, right?”
2024-10-15 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Rob Fraser: The Power of Focus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We should be able to make a great all day performance sock that someone could line their whole drawer with based on what height they like and what kind of material they like. And you shouldn't have to make a decision in the morning anymore of what you're going to wear. That sock will do it for you.”
2024-10-15 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Rob Fraser: The Power of Focus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Have fun designs on them. What we recognized early on is socks are this, like I mentioned with cycling, socks are this way that people can express individuality. And within that, people have different ways they like to do that, whether or not they like to celebrate different animals they love or nature landscapes or their favorite food. So we discovered that it's really hard digitally because we're primarily sold all online. We're also sold in store, but primarily online, at least for the majority of the business, how through the computer screen or the phone screen can we convince you that this sock feels good without putting it on your feet. That's really tough. An easier way is to give you an emotional response being like, I love cats, for example. I want to buy that sock because it has cats on it. But what we know is that's the best pair of socks you're ever going to put on. And so that person.”
2024-10-15 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Rob Fraser: The Power of Focus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's the fine balance of like it's like a hug for your feet, you know, and but how do you not make that too compressive and how do you make that work across a wide variety of foot sizes? And we're not always perfect, but that is the goal. Like it should hug the leg and not fall down, but it also should come off the leg without leaving marks, which is a tough thing to do or striving to always improve that. But I think we've got a good mix. And your story is not uncommon. The people will come in and they'll buy a pair. typically because a lot of our socks”
2024-10-15 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Rob Fraser: The Power of Focus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Going to be seamless. They're going to be moisture wicking. They're going to have support. So there's going to be support in the arch to help with midfoot fatigue. There's going to be strategic cushioning. So like, where is the foot making contact with the ground? We could go on for days. But ultimately, what I was trying to solve for was like I want something that is going to be incredibly comfortable, useful across a bunch of different sports or activities. And it was born out of a personal need, right? Like I said, I was going to school. I was working a job and I was still training and staying active. I was doing some triathlons at the time. And I wanted a pair of socks that could do all of those things because the cycling socks I mentioned I would wear at school. They weren't great for running. They would fall down. The cuff wasn't compressive enough. And so I was like, that led to that kind of discovery of like, why isn't this better? And ultimately, a good pair of socks should be supportive. They should look good. They should feel good. You should be able to do almost everything in them. I mean, that seems obvious, but it wasn't at the time.”
2024-10-15 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Rob Fraser: The Power of Focus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. It was almost a punishment. And then as an adult, you've learned to almost hate this product and buy it begrudgingly at the department store. It's an afterthought. No one actually thinks about their socks. And so we're living in this world of 90 plus percent of the population is thinking a lot about everything they wear except for one of the most important things. Really, one of the pair of apparel that touches the ground with you, right? And is kind of foundational to the feeling right up the standing and walking and everything you do. The idea that this was an unaware category was super interesting, but what makes a sock special? I mean, there's so many things. Like the common socks you'll buy, they're just low quality. The seams, they're not seamless. So they're going to, you know, create hotspots and pinching. They're going to be typically probably low quality cotton. And so they're going to absorb sweat, which leads to blisters. There's a ton of different things. If you look at, you know, any good athletics sock and specifically ours.”
2024-10-15 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Rob Fraser: The Power of Focus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, what you said is not uncommon. If you think about socks in general, they're the world's worst gift as you're a kid. It's what your parents always would get you as a gift.”
2024-10-15 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Rob Fraser: The Power of Focus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But at the time, I was just like, socks are cool, you know. I think so could be improved. And it turned out as I went further down that path, I uncovered how much opportunity actually existed in stocks. And ultimately, the insight was the entire world was moving towards athleisure. We were coming into a less traditional, less formal way of dressing and much more into a more functional way of dressing. And we can see that with our clothing of the pants I'm wearing right now, for example, or the yoga pant. And when I looked at the sock category, they remained use case specific. So the recycling socks or running socks or dress socks. I was like, why isn't there a yoga pant for the foot? That was the idea. It's like, look at the yoga pant. How versatile that is. You can wear it exercise. You can dress it up, down, casual. I was like, what a functional fantastic and fashionable piece of apparel. It's like, why are our socks not like that? And so that was the simple idea. And I got kind of obsessed with it. And I was like,”
2024-10-15 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Rob Fraser: The Power of Focus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In the gym at work, and so I became known as the sock guy before owning a sock business. And so when it became times like, I'm going to start a business. I started thinking of like, what do I know and what do I like and what do I think can be improved? And ultimately wanted at the time I loved brands like Lululemon and Red Bull. Those were two like kind of top tier brands for me around their athlete marketing, their product development. I just, I loved everything about those brands. I was like, I don't really, I'm not technical. I didn't have like a particular set of skills. I was like apparel seems like a more an area that I could get into and understand. I've got some skills I could do there. And what's, you know, what's like the simplest form of apparel, at least, you know, my thinking back then was like, oh, I kind of know sock. Socks seemed like a good place to start because relatively low risk in terms of how much I would need to invest to get started. It was the culmination of all of those things. And I could probably tell a story right now of like why socks were this incredible business opportunity, which they”
2024-10-15 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Rob Fraser: The Power of Focus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Stocks, particularly in cycling, are a large part of the culture. So in cycling, when you're on a team, it's an individual sport. We race individually, but you're on a team. And the team, whether it's national or your sponsorship team, you'll get a kit. So you'll all look the same. You look the same as your teammates. Socks were this area where you could wear whatever you wanted. And so I would always wear kind of funky colored socks. I actually had a sock sponsorship. That was a way that my parents ultimately could pick me out on the hill because you're watching a bunch of bikers come down the hill and I would wear really loud socks like pink and blue. And you could kind of spot that and be like, okay, there's Rob. Beyond that was a way to kind of like express your individuality, right? It's like, okay, you're in this sea of sameness. How can I have a little bit of me out there? And so socks were already in my blood. And so I took that same kind of mentality out of sport into the real world, so that school, I would wear those socks.”
2024-10-15 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Rob Fraser: The Power of Focus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is going to be over soon, and like real life's going to hit. I'm going to be expected to go deeper into the career and just kind of go further down this path I'm on that I really don't want to be on. And I don't know how I got onto it, but for some reason listened and listened or read to the four hour work week by Tim Ferris. And it sounds so trite. So it's so common. I got into that book and what it really taught me, I can remember exactly where I was. I was walking around a local golf course. You know, I listened to books more than.”
2024-10-15 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Rob Fraser: The Power of Focus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The business was the way out, and so during that two years, I tried a bunch of things, I was applying for jobs, I ended up getting into the local college in Victoria where I live in Victoria BC for sport management. I thought the logical step here was a career in sport. Like I said, coaching. It's like, here's my skill set. How do I apply that moving forward? What's the logical thing to do here? So get into sport management. I simultaneously got a job with the Canadian Sport Institute, was working with Future Olympians. I was on paper doing what made sense, what you would see the typical post-athlete do. And I was dead inside. I was just like, this can't be it. You know, I'm doing what is supposed to be right. This is what everyone says is right. And I was like, if this is the rest of my life, I'm not sure like I can do this, you know. And at the time, I was going into my second year of school and I was just kind of, yeah, I was in a four-year program. So three more years left, but I was starting to get that angst of like.”
2024-10-15 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Rob Fraser: The Power of Focus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT