YouSaid · the spoken record

Tom Rinks

lines on the record: 122
first: 2026-07-13
most recent: 2026-07-13
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

“Yeah, they were from Lyon, so which means Lion, so we called it Da Leone. Bran actually came up with that name. Daily One. and had Bill Wall, you know, make a cork. Bill Wall's, it was like a jewelry to the stars, all the skull and crossbone and all that stuff for rock stars. He was the guy that made them all. And he had a shop in Malibu. And Renee mostly designed this cork that had skulls and snakes on it. And they cast it out of a ball of sterling silver, and he carved it for us and looked badass. It looked like something. I think the cheapest bottle.”
2026-07-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Sun Bum: Tom Rinks. The Secrets of a Master Brand Builder (2023) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Correct. He found a fabrica plant, a place where they make the tequila down in Jalisco somewhere, which is where they make all the tequila down in that state in Mexico. He got that and then just needed a brand behind it.”
2026-07-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Sun Bum: Tom Rinks. The Secrets of a Master Brand Builder (2023) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so he fit that bill. He had just such a great aesthetic, but he was a big guy, tough, great in the clubs. He knew lots of people. He was a great businessman.”
2026-07-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Sun Bum: Tom Rinks. The Secrets of a Master Brand Builder (2023) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He wasn't but man he fit the bill, you know? It's all about feeling when you build a brand, right? People buy things because the way they make them feel, right? You buy a Louis Vuitton because you think it makes you feel rich. You buy old surfan because you think it looks cool. You buy athletics, Nike because you think you look more athletic or whatever the type might be. I know there's other things, but everything you do is based on how this product or... Brand makes you feel about yourself or think other people feel about you. So when it came to tequila and looking at the tequila business, when Brent called me. Was pretty easy if you're ordering teel at a bar or whiskey at a bar just straight up to keel on the rocks. You're trying to be a badass a little bit. You're not owning a cosmopolitan.”
2026-07-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Sun Bum: Tom Rinks. The Secrets of a Master Brand Builder (2023) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, he was my best friend growing up. He was also a pastor's kid, and we kind of saved each other's life by sneaking out and going out to clubs together. And my childhood was great because of Brent. His name's Brett Hawking, yeah. And he ended up being a mortgage guy and just crushing into the mortgage businesses and just one of the best in the country. But was just getting tired of it and wanted to start to keel a company. He wanted to get into the spirits business.”
2026-07-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Sun Bum: Tom Rinks. The Secrets of a Master Brand Builder (2023) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, when we did Rinks Kineti, the word was kind of getting a little bit around about us on the brand side of things, just word of mouth. He had a lot of talent on the design world that he had brought with him from Copenhagen. So the accounts that we worked on that we got initially were the Rockin' Republic, the Daily on Tequila. And the idea is we'll make, we know how to make brands, we'll make a brand for you and you pay the fees for us to do that and you gave us a piece of your company”
2026-07-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Sun Bum: Tom Rinks. The Secrets of a Master Brand Builder (2023) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I was like, why would you? And he was basically, he grew up an atheist. You know what I mean? He hated the church. He didn't believe any of it. And I was like, why would you want to come and work do this? And he said, because I have never looked for God or looked for spirituality or anything because there was no on-ramp for me, a person like me. And Renee helped open my eyes to what needed to be said to create those on-ramps.”
2026-07-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Sun Bum: Tom Rinks. The Secrets of a Master Brand Builder (2023) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Renee worked at an agency, a little design agency that was a couple of doors down from the little office that we had. He had just gotten here from Copenhagen. He grew up in Copenhagen. And he was just amazing brand designer. And they were expensive. He was like $200 an hour, which was a lot for a nonprofit. But, you know, as I realized I couldn't afford to keep using an agency and I was going to hire somebody. And he said, I'll do it. And I said, I can only pay X amount, which was half of what he was getting.”
2026-07-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Sun Bum: Tom Rinks. The Secrets of a Master Brand Builder (2023) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, for sure I could breathe a sigh of relief, but it wasn't as much money as everybody thought. You know, everybody thought. I had $40 million under my mattress. No. I got 33% of the lawyers plus hard costs, 25% of my agent. Me and Joe split the rest government took the rest. You know, it was not as much. So in the end, you might.”
2026-07-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Sun Bum: Tom Rinks. The Secrets of a Master Brand Builder (2023) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, yeah, we all cried, we hugged. I didn't know the people in the audience that were there on our side were obviously ecstatic and Taco Bell side just dropped their heads, packed their bags. We just looked at them, scowled at them, and they walked out.”
2026-07-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Sun Bum: Tom Rinks. The Secrets of a Master Brand Builder (2023) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, dude. Yeah, just probably cry, like, probably just the emotion of it being over and of having taken these guys on. Beating him. It was just overwhelming. And awarded us what we ask for, which was the contract. You know, at one point, we'd given him the contract. They'd ask, obviously, what kind of price we were going to want on it. And Arlene Scanlon had given them the terms of everything, which was a piece of the profits from the toys, a piece of the advertising budget, a piece of all these things. So the claim was just an implied contract claim. So we were asking for that contract and the jury agreed that we deserved that contract.”
2026-07-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Sun Bum: Tom Rinks. The Secrets of a Master Brand Builder (2023) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, it got noticed that the verdict was in, so we all went back to the courthouse and judge, Jerry came in. We all were standing there holding hands and they read guilty on all counts.”
2026-07-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Sun Bum: Tom Rinks. The Secrets of a Master Brand Builder (2023) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Five years after everything they had been putting us through. And I just looked at Joe and he looked at me and gave me a little nod. And then I looked at our lawyers and they were like, oh, please, oh, please do not say yes. Please, we've worked five years to get to this moment, to take these guys on. Don't say yes. And I looked at them and said, no, let's go. And we walked back in. And three and a half week trial was super hairy. I was crazy cross examined. But they really, they didn't have anything. And I think it helped us being in Grand Rapids. I think our lawyers were so good and their lawyers were super slick.”
2026-07-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Sun Bum: Tom Rinks. The Secrets of a Master Brand Builder (2023) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I was on the stand, I think, for three days. It was a three and a half week federal trial, the first time they offered us something was at the trial. It was just before it started they had lots of lawyers on their side. We had our little three lawyers on our side. Judge came out, everybody rose, the jury was in. And they went up and said they'd like to see everybody in chambers. And so the judge asked us all to come in and talk about. I don't remember the number because I was dazed, but they offered us a few million dollars to settle right there.”
2026-07-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Sun Bum: Tom Rinks. The Secrets of a Master Brand Builder (2023) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Originally going to be the brand of Christianity, if you will, because that's what I've kind of gotten good at making brands over the years. The brand of Christianity was just horrible. Like the only message, it wasn't beautiful. It was kind of ugly. All the protesters and, you know, people killing abortion clinic doctors and things like that on the news and just the perception of Christianity was really not that good. And so I thought maybe we could actually try to change the brand a little bit by this thing. made it a nonprofit and started to try to think about how to make this thing happen.”
2026-07-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Sun Bum: Tom Rinks. The Secrets of a Master Brand Builder (2023) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And he was just so good, man. He just had it. His sermons were just insane and they were so relevant. And then one day he had a couple other friends all get together because he wanted to talk about getting his cassette ministry cleaned up. So, you know, they record the sermons and he wanted to get his message out to more people and thought he could sell his cassettes or make them available somehow through the church. And we were just saying, okay, yeah, that sounds great. Do that. And I kind of, you know, there was no light coming through a window that just hit me like, you can do this, Tom. Why don't you step up and do it?”
2026-07-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Sun Bum: Tom Rinks. The Secrets of a Master Brand Builder (2023) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sure. My wife liked going every Sunday and we had little kids and she wanted them to go to church too. And it was okay. I just didn't listen But then this guy came along, Rob Bell, and he was like a guest speaker. He was young, fresh. He felt like he swore, even if he didn't, it felt like he was swearing up there and listened to the same kind of music that I listened to and referenced movies that I liked. And he was a real dude. He was a real guy that I would like to hang around that actually believed in God. It was somehow making it work. And we decided to go to his church when he opened a church. So he opened this little church in this warehouse with not that many people.”
2026-07-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Sun Bum: Tom Rinks. The Secrets of a Master Brand Builder (2023) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They didn't offer us one diamond, and if they would have over those five years we'd have taken it in a heartbeat because it was beating us up so bad. And like you say, it was hard to concentrate on anything else. And we didn't think we could win. We didn't think we could make it to trial because it was going to cost so much.”
2026-07-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Sun Bum: Tom Rinks. The Secrets of a Master Brand Builder (2023) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, they never, they never, if they would have, we met with Sidley and Austin, their lawyers in Chicago. We drove down there with our lawyer. And if they would have offered us, they're going to hate to hear this right now. But if they would have offered us $200,000, we'd have taken. We just wanted to get paid for our work. That's it. You know what I mean? We wouldn't have needed anybody to even say it was our.”
2026-07-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Sun Bum: Tom Rinks. The Secrets of a Master Brand Builder (2023) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All over in California, everywhere recalling, congratulating me for the campaign. Thought it was amazing. Congrats that we got everything, all the congrats in the mail and phone calls all the time. It's so exciting. I was like, yeah, that's not us. They took it.”
2026-07-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Sun Bum: Tom Rinks. The Secrets of a Master Brand Builder (2023) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it was super distracting. I was the guy suing Taco Bell, and everybody had known before, or everybody, my friends had known that we were doing it. So when the commercials started airing, when the Super Bowl ad ran and all that, people”
2026-07-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Sun Bum: Tom Rinks. The Secrets of a Master Brand Builder (2023) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, it kind of pulled us apart a little bit. Was stressful, and we had done all this work, and I don't know if we blamed each other. I don't think we did, but it was just, you know, it was kind of over because now Taco Bell owns this little chihuahua. So even our shirts stop selling because everybody wanted the Taco Bell Chihuahua shirts. We were just a knockoff. So sales of that dropped off. So we really didn't have anything to work together. So he did his thing. We had offices right next to each other, so we saw each other all the time and consoled each other all the time. We were still friends, but we stopped working together.”
2026-07-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Sun Bum: Tom Rinks. The Secrets of a Master Brand Builder (2023) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it was the Chihuahua in me, I guess you could say, right? It was fighting for the little guy and the big guys just were taking advantage and I'm pretty relentless.”
2026-07-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Sun Bum: Tom Rinks. The Secrets of a Master Brand Builder (2023) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Taco Bell had the best law firm in New York. I forget the name of it. And they had Sidley in Austin and Chicago, big one and LA in-house and they had so many.”
2026-07-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Sun Bum: Tom Rinks. The Secrets of a Master Brand Builder (2023) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, they tested that ad in the northeast, which has happened to be where I was in Michigan, and I just lost it, you know, because it was the commercial that I'd written. You know, the first three commercials were our commercials. Like we had storyboarded and shared and sent. So it wasn't everything was the same. It was just like a knife to the chest.”
2026-07-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Sun Bum: Tom Rinks. The Secrets of a Master Brand Builder (2023) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, sadly, sadly we didn't know what else to do, but to move on. But yeah, it took the wind out of our sails for sure because we had told everybody about our families new. Everybody was asking about it. We were high fiving daily.”
2026-07-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Sun Bum: Tom Rinks. The Secrets of a Master Brand Builder (2023) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It we're that's it, but it would have been cool if they had called us. Come on, what happened? You know, we were your best buddy, and now you won't even. Say good”
2026-07-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Sun Bum: Tom Rinks. The Secrets of a Master Brand Builder (2023) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We just thought they weren't going to go with it. We just thought they were going to had another idea because we knew their work with some other agencies on some different ideas too And so we thought”
2026-07-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Sun Bum: Tom Rinks. The Secrets of a Master Brand Builder (2023) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, they did. We were just rolling so well along with everything. And like I said, everything was slated to go. And all of a sudden Ed stopped calling us back.”
2026-07-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Sun Bum: Tom Rinks. The Secrets of a Master Brand Builder (2023) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was the most exciting. It was the creatively, it was just over the moon. Yeah, designing the toys that they would give away, the little dogs, it was getting good.”
2026-07-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Sun Bum: Tom Rinks. The Secrets of a Master Brand Builder (2023) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, early on when we just, you know, probably like the second day when Joe and I were thinking about it, we realized that if this was going to be for TV, it can't be a cartoon anymore. It has to be a real chihuahua, especially as we started storyboarding it. We had to take it and just turn it into a real dog. Kind of like... Garfield could turn to a real cat, so that's what we did.”
2026-07-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Sun Bum: Tom Rinks. The Secrets of a Master Brand Builder (2023) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We're doing our tray liners. We designed their uniforms. We designed their hats. We design their posters. We wrote the commercials. I wrote the commercials. Joe's storyboard at the commercials.”
2026-07-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Sun Bum: Tom Rinks. The Secrets of a Master Brand Builder (2023) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. So she could represent us and strike the deals and make sure we're doing everything right. Because, you know, just as we were just talking to him even on the phone and through email, we knew it was getting, we needed some help as far as what this was going to cost, what the fees would be. They were asking about the fees and all that. And we worked with them for 18 months. We were on the calendar of when it was going to happen. They were planning on testing it. What kind of”
2026-07-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Sun Bum: Tom Rinks. The Secrets of a Master Brand Builder (2023) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, Ed Elfaro was the main guy. I don't remember who he was. He's like in charge of brand at Taco Bell in California. They were actually there looking for a mascot. They were looking for something to license. They had been looking for it and working on it with different ad agencies for a while and had sent Ed there. And so they were just looking for ideas and they stumbled upon our booth and we had a great conversation. We got obviously super excited about the possibility of that. We sent them home with some t-shirts and all the information and all the stuff that we had. And we spent some time with them talking about it. We flew to... Irvine, and we knew we were over our heads a little bit with this thing, so we got an agent, Arlene Scanlon.”
2026-07-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Sun Bum: Tom Rinks. The Secrets of a Master Brand Builder (2023) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, it never went past the trade show, but we talked for quite a while at the trade show about it, and just other companies, you know, they're just looking for who is their demographic, who's our demographic, our demographic was young high school, college boys, you know? Yeah, I don't remember who else other than the big one, you know, Taco Bell came by.”
2026-07-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Sun Bum: Tom Rinks. The Secrets of a Master Brand Builder (2023) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There was, yeah, people had started to see it around a little bit. I forget all of the people that came, but Minolta came by. Camera? Yeah, they were making a little small camera. They were interested in licensing it for their small camera, so they'd have a little mascot for it.”
2026-07-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Sun Bum: Tom Rinks. The Secrets of a Master Brand Builder (2023) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You show your stuff, and if I had a lunch pale company and I wanted to put power rangers or teenage mutant engine turtles or Baywatch or Snoopy on my lunch pails or my sleeping bags or my mugs or whatever kind of company I have, I go there and I see all of the licensable properties that people own, companies own, and I make a deal with them. So that's what that show was.”
2026-07-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Sun Bum: Tom Rinks. The Secrets of a Master Brand Builder (2023) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that was part of the timing, right? I knew we had to make as much money as quickly as we could. Yeah. So there's a show called The Licensing Show at the Jabbits in New York.”
2026-07-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Sun Bum: Tom Rinks. The Secrets of a Master Brand Builder (2023) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I know it sounds stupid, and no, not everybody guy, but enough people compared to the other boobs, right? But by blowing up most booths, you're kind of looking for people to talk to. Our booth had people there. We were doing interviews. We couldn't write the orders fast enough.”
2026-07-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Sun Bum: Tom Rinks. The Secrets of a Master Brand Builder (2023) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Know, we're selling tens of thousands of shirts, right? We weren't being getting rich by any means, but we had something. We could feel the pulse. We were going. I was going with new agenda to a show, a trade show, called The Super Show, which is no longer around. It used to be the biggest trade show in the world, at least for apparel. And I got a booth space and Psycho Chihuahua just was blowing up.”
2026-07-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Sun Bum: Tom Rinks. The Secrets of a Master Brand Builder (2023) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so we sent the, we made some shirts at Perrin and we sent them out. I found some reps. They said they liked him. They would take them and try to sell them in. And if it's sold, they would take the line. If it didn't, they wouldn't. And these couple of rep groups took it out to see what the temperature was and called me back and said, everybody wants psychochihuahua.”
2026-07-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Sun Bum: Tom Rinks. The Secrets of a Master Brand Builder (2023) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly, that's what it was. So it said things like on the backs of the shirt, they said things like, you know, I don't roll over and I don't play dead or bite me or fetch this or big dog suck. Big dog suck.”
2026-07-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Sun Bum: Tom Rinks. The Secrets of a Master Brand Builder (2023) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, let's do something with Chihuahua. Let's do one more line. So, not just those two lines that we're going to do. Let's do this chihuahua line. Because I think, and here's why he loved it. He drew this really badass little small shaking chihuahua. And we put words on it. So psycho chihuahua, you know, 1923 or something in these Mexican colors.”
2026-07-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Sun Bum: Tom Rinks. The Secrets of a Master Brand Builder (2023) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was a photo of her holding this new dog that she just got called Chiquita. And at the time, right, because I'd been looking at, okay, what's going on in the t-shirt world? And when a line gets popular, it's popular by the cool people, the college-age kids, the high schoolers, right? They start buying it. And then their younger brothers see them wearing it, and then they want to buy it. So then it gets a little younger. And so that's the first sign it's going to be trending, starting to trend down on the cool factor. And then when the dads start buying it, and then the dads are wearing it, then those cool kids stop wearing it. And so then they're going to be looking for something new. So I saw that kind of happening and I saw. Madonna and Jakita, and I was like, took that to Joe, and we called it Psycho Chihuahua.”
2026-07-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Sun Bum: Tom Rinks. The Secrets of a Master Brand Builder (2023) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Nobody would wear those shirts, guys, actually. Nobody would buy one person wore those shirts. But while we were getting ready to do them. I saw an article in a magazine that had Madonna. This is like a ninety four with her chiquita of her chihuahua.”
2026-07-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Sun Bum: Tom Rinks. The Secrets of a Master Brand Builder (2023) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, just said Mosh. It was just a stylized version of these people dancing on the front of shirts in different positions. It just said Mosh on the top, right? Which was kind of cool because of Mosh pits and all that”
2026-07-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Sun Bum: Tom Rinks. The Secrets of a Master Brand Builder (2023) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I just saw it as art. I was a goofy little doodle cartoonist, right? This guy's a real cartoonist, so saw some of his designs that he was working on for t-shirts and said, hey, I know how to get reps and stuff. Why don't we start a company ourselves? And then I felt like I wanted to bring something to the table. I was getting the reps together. It was for the line. There was two lines. One was called Mosh. The other one was called Caveman that he drew.”
2026-07-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Sun Bum: Tom Rinks. The Secrets of a Master Brand Builder (2023) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I was at parent screen printing and I saw this guy's work that was also being printed there and it was really cool. What was it?”
2026-07-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Sun Bum: Tom Rinks. The Secrets of a Master Brand Builder (2023) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, obviously, the ones that were close by Michigan State, Notre Dame. Indiana, Illinois, North Carolina, Georgetown. But I had I didn't really know business. So I was, I had huge inventory and huge fees from parents. For the printing, and you know, I just didn't have any concept of margins of what it really took to have a business. So while by the end, I had 400 and something licenses. Well, I had lots of licenses. I wasn't super profitable.”
2026-07-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Sun Bum: Tom Rinks. The Secrets of a Master Brand Builder (2023) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I knew it was getting exciting. I started adding some schools, but I wasn't making serious money. Not enough to think that I could support my fam forever. I didn't know if it was a fluke.”
2026-07-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Sun Bum: Tom Rinks. The Secrets of a Master Brand Builder (2023) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT