Founders 15

If you don’t want to run through walls and change the world after listening to this episode, then you must not have been paying attention. Anytime I’m around David Vobora, I am so inspired and fired up. David started Adaptive Training Foundation, which is a unique nonprofit that empowers those with physical disabilities to transform their lives through exercise and community. Mizzen+Main dedicates all of its philanthropic giving to ATF as our commitment to give back to the veteran community as many of those going through their program are veterans. David explains that ATF isn’t a veteran only organization because as society we shouldn’t view ourselves along that divide: veterans and civilians. We’re all Americans. We’re all human. We should reinforce and help each other, and there is power in that community and the bonds formed as people work hard to transform their lives. David’s story is truly remarkable. Drafted as “Mr. Irrelevant”, his NFL career was cut short by injury and an over prescription of drugs that led to a scary addiction. Thankfully, like so many founders, his wife helped redirect his life and give him new purpose. It wasn’t until he met Travis Mills, a quadruple amputee, that the new purpose really took shape. I’ll stop there and let our conversation speak for itself. Please say hello to David on Instagram @davidvobora and check out the life changing work ATF is doing @adaptivetrainingfoundation.

I’ve known Lila and her husband Jeremy not just as fellow product founders but fellow Dallas founders for years! I love husband and wife founding teams for all the obvious fun reasons but also given Jen and I worked together for years. Lila and Jeremy started Hari Mari as a premium flip flop brand and have taken over people’s feet across the country! I actually just found out about their new initiative, Studio, to move into other areas of footwear given how much demand they’ve received from their customers. We talked about the unique challenges of building a company in the product space along with universal truths we face as founders along with building a company with offices and team members across the country. There’s quite a bit of relatable and educational bits of wisdom in this one! Say hello to Lila and Jeremy and the whole team on Instagram at @harimarishoes and go get yourself and everyone you know the most comfortable flip flops ever.

I’m not sure there’s a much better place to record a podcast live than a secret whiskey room showcasing a founder’s best whiskeys from around the world at a distillery that is located on a private golf course. Let’s just say this was a fun setting and the conversation lived up to the location. I met Leonard Firestone right when I launched Mizzen+Main. He was just launching TX Whiskey at that time as the first product of Firestone & Robertson, the company he started with his cofounder. While he was just launching that specific whiskey, the reality was it had already been in process for years because of the time it took to get all the appropriate pieces in place, then distill it, then put it in barrels, then bottle it! This conversation covered a wide range of topics that offer a lot to learn from, especially the courage and audacity that Leonard and his business partner Troy had with zero experience in the industry, the capital requirements, the lead times, and the difficulty of the spirits market. Imagine everything on the line, you haven’t even started selling your first product, and you start your second product line that will take several more years before you see a dime from it! That’s just what they did in pushing forward with TX Bourbon before they’d started to see sales from TX Whiskey. It’s no surprise, if you’ve met Leonard and Troy, that their Whiskey (and Bourbon) started getting wait lists from restaurants and retail locations and even thousands of people showing up to the distillery to get a chance to get one of the first bottles. Say hello at @frdistilling, stop by their distillery located on a private golf course, or pick up a bottle wherever it’s sold. I’m not sure if I have to say this legally, but you must be 21 or older to listen to this? Maybe, maybe not. Check your local laws - then enjoy this conversation with Leonard Firestone.

This was a particularly unique episode of Founders15 because Web Smith and I worked together in the early days of building Mizzen+Main. Today, Web is the founder of 2PM, a newsletter for CEO’s, investors, creatives, marketers, and entrepreneurs with all the most relevant information along with an Executive Membership option with in depth commentary, analysis, and robust databases. There are a lot of newsletters today… there are few great ones. 2PM is one of the absolute best. Web shares insights into the unique challenges of “scaling insight” - something that can be tremendously difficult to do - along with his evolving routine of staying sane which includes sleeping “a whole lot more these days” of up to 6.5 hours (hint: that’s still not a lot of sleep!). He is well on his way to building 2PM into what his goal is: to be the “go to source for the entire industry” As a personal subscriber, executive member, and avid reader of the newsletter despite unsubscribing to almost everything else these days, I highly encourage you all to check out 2pml.com and say hello to web on twitter @web, yes that really is his twitter handle!

Ted is a man who loves his wife and his family to the core of who he is, he just didn’t love wearing a wedding ring. His business partner felt the same way. So in the classic “there must be a better way”, they created a silicone ring that spawned a whole industry and has turned into so much more at QALO.

Tom Patterson is the founder of Tommy John, an underwear and undershirt company that started by addressing the chronic problem of men’s undershirts coming untucked. It has evolved into one that sells underwear and more for men and women. Tom used his skills as a cold calling salesman to get his early product into Neiman Marcus, which really helped cement the trajectory and future of the company. I really loved hearing about Tommy John’s core values, which include “It’s not me, it’s we” and “GSD 2.0” (or get sh*t done 2.0) as an evolution reflecting their company’s growth from the original GSD attitude. We discussed the wave of entrepreneurship and how founders need to be able to be a quarterback at one point, an ice skater another time, and then learn how to be both left and right handed - founders really have to do it all. In case you’re curious, Tom doesn’t want Tommy John to be the next Ralph Lauren or Nike - he wants them to be the first Tommy John.

Dorothy Shain is a mixed media artist who in a short period of time has already made a real career out of her truly beautiful and unique art. As a “left brain” person, it’s taken a lot to cultivate and enhance my creativity, so I had a lot of questions for Dorothy about her creative process and learned quite a lot through this conversation. The menswear market is crowded, and I knew that going in, but I have so much respect for artists who go all in on their talent to build a career in potentially the most crowded market there is! Anyone can call themselves an artist - few can make something really valued out of a career in it. I loved hearing how Dorothy internalized the lessons from Danny Meyer’s “Setting The Table” about really owning the touchpoints and relationships in her world to create a memorable experience and story for her customers and art. She also has a unique approach to the morning - 10 minutes of meditation, 10 minutes of reading, and writing down 10 things she’s grateful for - that have helped keep her sane on a very tough journey of building a career out of her art. This was a really different conversation in many ways while being so very similar to convesrations with more traditional business founders. I was fortunate to have it and hope you find value in listening to it. You can support the amazing work she’s doing for cancer survivors via her Instagram. I just bought one of the commemorative scarves after hearing the story behind the initiative.

Heidi Zak and her husband started ThirdLove, a company changing the way women think of what’s possible mixing form, function, and fashion when it comes to undergarments. In six years, they’ve grown their team to over 250 employees and 10 million women have used their custom fit finder on their site.