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Arena Show Part II: Brooks Running (with CEO Jim Weber)

For the final act of the Arena Show, we’re joined by Brooks CEO Jim Weber to tell the amazing story of how he transformed the company from a 3rd tier, deeply cashflow negative “also-ran” into one of the world’s premiere fitness brands and a crown jewel of the Berkshire Hathaway empire — with compounding revenue and cashflow growth that rivals even the legendary Mrs. See’s Candies! *More Acquired:* - Get email updates https://www.acquired.fm/email and vote on future episodes! - Join the Slack http://acquired.fm/slack - Check out the latest swag in the ACQ Merch Store https://www.acquired.fm/store! _Note: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions._

Ben GilberthostDavid RosenthalhostJim Weberguest
May 16, 20221h 10mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 0:55

    Cold open: Ghost 14s, Adrenelines, and “active runner” humor

    1. BG

      So have you, uh, gone running yet in your custom acquired Ghost 14s?

    2. DR

      Dude, the Ghosts are amazing. They are the best sneaker I have ever known, bar none, hands down. I used to have Adrenelines. Adrenelines are also great, but I literally wear them, like, all day, every day.

    3. BG

      But David, those shoes are only for active runners. You're, you're misusing the point of the Ghosts. [chuckles]

    4. DR

      Well, with a baby, I mean, I'm literally wearing a baby-

    5. BG

      [laughing]

    6. DR

      -walking the hills of San Francisco. I'm burning more calories than I did when I was running every day.

    7. BG

      It's true. It's just a slow run at the end of the day-

    8. DR

      Yeah

    9. BG

      ... that's all, that's all you're doing.

    10. SP

      Who got the truth? [upbeat music] Is it you? Is it you? Is it you? Who got the truth now? Is it you? Is it you? Is it you? Sit me down, say it straight. Another story on the way. Who got the truth?

  2. 0:55 – 2:25

    Show kickoff + why Brooks will surprise a tech audience

    1. BG

      Welcome to season ten, episode eight, The Arena Show, presented by-

    2. DR

      Ooh

    3. BG

      ... PitchBook, of Acquired, the podcast about great technology companies and the stories and playbooks behind them. I'm Ben Gilbert, and I'm the co-founder and managing director of Seattle-based Pioneer Square Labs, and our venture fund, PSL Ventures.

    4. DR

      And I'm David Rosenthal, and I'm an angel investor today, back home in San Francisco. But man, what a special day that was in Seattle. [chuckles]

    5. BG

      That it was, and we are your hosts. We're gonna go right here into the on-stage introduction of Jim and the Brooks story, so I don't wanna give too much exposition here, except to say that if you've been sort of thinking Brooks is this like shoe brand, and what can tech people possibly learn from a hundred-year-old shoe company? Prepare to have your mind blown. Jim's one of the most dynamic guests that we've ever had on Acquired, and I just got so many comments leaving the arena, just absolutely floored with all the great takeaways, and lessons, and quotes that people wrote down from Jim, so make sure you enjoy that. Now, before we dive into that, we have a fun little Q&A with our presenting sponsor, Vanta, the leader in automated security and compliance. Now, as you know from hearing from Matt Spitz live in the arena, the head of engineering at Vanta, we are huge fans of Vanta and their approach to the whole security and compliance process, SOC 2, HIPAA, GDPR,

  3. 2:25 – 4:30

    Sponsor Q&A: Vanta CEO on product as art and GTM as industrial engineering

    1. BG

      and more. And today we've got CEO and co-founder Christina Cacioppo back with us to chat about Vanta. Um, okay, so Christina, we've been talking about your product all season. What else is unique about Vanta, the company? Do you personally have any strong beliefs about how to run a company, culture, how, how to be successful in this ecosystem?

    2. SP

      One strong belief I've developed, uh, about the two parts of a company, go-to-market, and, you know, end product and design, is that I think a lot of folks, right, somewhat naturally run the engineering side in particular, like, as if it were engineering, industrial engineering. I actually think that side is much more like art than science. You know, like what is product development? Again, there's metrics you can put around it, but especially at the early stages, like it's a lot of, you know, when you see it, and you can go through processes, but you can't really prescribe outcomes. I think in contrast, the go-to-market side, like marketing, sales, you know, customer success, especially for a SMB business or mid-market business, should be like run industrial engineering-wise, right? You just have processes, you have like inputs, you have transformations, you have, you know, conversions, you have outputs. The spreadsheet map there is actually really helpful, and that can be a lot more predictable. Whereas again, I think on the, especially new product development side, that if you try to, you know, go full industrial engineering on it, you will just not do anything interesting. So I think part of the magic at Vanta is we've been [chuckles] able to bring those two sides together and cross-pollinate across teams, and so give folks on the engineering team opportunities to, you know, see into how we sell, and vice versa. And that's one of the things that I'm most proud of over the last few years at Vanta, and I think has contributed to some of the early success we've had.

    3. BG

      Our thanks to Vanta, the leader in automated security and compliance software. If you are looking to join Vanta's two thousand-plus customers to get compliance certified in weeks instead of months, you can click the link in the show notes or go to vanta.com/acquired for a ten percent discount.

    4. DR

      Whoo! Thank you, Vanta.

  4. 4:30 – 9:06

    Brooks’ near-death state in 2001 and Jim Weber’s “bet the company” focus

    1. BG

      Thank you, Vanta. All right, listeners, please note that this is not investment advice. It definitely wasn't investment advice last episode. And, uh, without further ado, on to our conversation with Jim Weber, the CEO of Brooks Running. All right, now, for our final act of the evening, we have a very fun local story that we've been dying to tell: Brooks Running. I, I mean-

    2. DR

      Whoo. [audience cheering]

    3. BG

      [chuckles] So I think a lot of people are probably familiar with this brand, especially in Seattle, especially if you are a runner, but the story of this business is absolutely unbelievable and extremely undertold until now. So when the CEO, Jim Weber, took the helm in 2002, the company was losing five million dollars a year. It was thirty million dollars in debt. It was a week away from missing payroll, and the board was, like, having weekly meetings to figure out how to make payroll. It was a business of pretty modest size. It was a sixty million dollar revenue business, and when we talk about this revenue number, you know, it's not SaaS numbers. Like, there's extremely real costs in making shoes, so you can imagine not making a ton of money, well, actually losing five million dollars a year. So that business had been around for, like, ninety years, and it sold all sorts of products at every price point to, frankly, a pretty random set of consumers in every category, not just running. So enter Jim.... Jim came in and bet the company exclusively on serving active runners as a segment, and he cut all other business lines. Over the last twenty years, he's grown the business to over a billion dollars in revenue, billion with a B, uh, and well over a billion, and is thriving, and thrived even through the pandemic. So along the way, Brooks was acquired by Berkshire Hathaway, and Warren Buffett personally elevated Brooks and Jim to make the company a direct report to him. Jim is a leader, a visionary, and a fighter, not only growing the business over the last twenty years, but personally fighting and beating cancer. Please welcome Jim Weber. [audience cheering]

    4. JW

      Hey, guys! It's great to be here, Ben.

    5. BG

      Thank you so much.

    6. DR

      Ah, Jim.

    7. JW

      Here we go.

    8. DR

      [chuckles]

    9. JW

      This is great. What a show.

    10. DR

      [chuckles] So, um, Jim, we, we figure you have a lot of footwear already. [laughing]

    11. JW

      I've got some shoes-

    12. BG

      [laughing]

    13. JW

      - and I sold six more pairs tonight.

    14. DR

      Ooh! [laughing]

    15. JW

      Awesome. [laughing]

    16. DR

      And this morning. Thank you for hosting the run.

    17. JW

      It was fun.

    18. DR

      So we have-

    19. JW

      Ah

    20. DR

      ... an Acquired hat for you.

    21. JW

      Awesome. Love it.

    22. DR

      And Acquired bag with some more goodies in it-

    23. JW

      Very nice

    24. DR

      ... from the Acquired family.

    25. JW

      Very nice.

    26. DR

      So-

    27. JW

      Best Jim bag at the company, for sure. [laughing]

    28. BG

      [laughing]

    29. JW

      Thank you.

    30. DR

      We, we hope to see this in the Trailhead store, starting in 2023. [chuckles]

  5. 9:06 – 12:32

    Jim’s career pattern: turnaround operator who wanted to play the long brand game

    1. BG

      ... which was very fun to hear your voice while I was running on the Burke by your office, listening to your voice. It was a very, [chuckles] very surreal experience. I wanna go all the way back. I'm gonna play David's role in this one. Let's go all the way back to when y- you first encountered Brooks in 1998. Talk to us about how you came to the company and where the company was at at that point.

    2. JW

      Yeah, so I, I've had, I had a really fun career. I became a consumer products person after some banking. Pillsbury, M&A, corporate development, strategy, got to run a brand. I've always wanted to run a business, and I ended up following an exec to the Coleman Company, so I sort of became an outdoor sporting goods guy. [audience laughing] And-

    3. DR

      This is Coleman, like, camping, like-

    4. JW

      Coleman Camping, but they owned a whole bunch of different businesses. And, and I so badly wanted to run a business. A little division, uh, they had down in Phoenix hit the wall, you know, just almost fraud, um, in the accounting and everything else, and I came back from a SWAT team, and, and I told my boss: "I wanna go run that."

    5. DR

      Put me in, coach. [laughing]

    6. BG

      [laughing]

    7. JW

      Put me in. Ran that, turned it around, sold it. Went up here to another Coleman division, O'Brien Watersports. It's in our backyard here in Redmond, Washington, a brand, and, and I ran that for several years, turned it around, got profitable. They sold it. There's a pattern here.

    8. DR

      [laughing]

    9. BG

      [chuckles]

    10. JW

      And then, you know, I went on to Sims Sports, a snowboard company, and, and, you know, we, we turned that around, and, and it ended up changing hands, and so, [ts] um, there I was, and I joined the board at Brooks. I joined the board at Nautilus, which was formerly Bowflex.

    11. DR

      Oh, yeah.

    12. JW

      And I did some banking work, middle market, M&A, um, marketing companies to investors. But on the board at Brooks, I had an inside view of what was happening there. And a good friend of mine, Helen Rocchi, had run it successfully in the '90s, but she left. It was owned by J. Whitney Capital, really a top-notch, for my money, middle-market M&A firm, uh, or, uh, uh, private equity firm, and they bought it, but the partners had left. Helen, the CEO, had left Brooks, and it started to go sideways. New partners at Whitney, all new management, they went through three CEOs, and, and so-

    13. DR

      And you were on the board the whole time.

    14. JW

      I was on the board, so I had a look inside, and, and it was a crisis. Weekly... You guys have experienced this, uh, weekly board calls on Fridays. The bank is not gonna fund. They want more capital. It was, it was a- it was exciting-

    15. DR

      [laughing]

    16. BG

      [laughing]

    17. JW

      - as they say. [audience laughing] So, um, after a couple of months, we did a lot of work. I saw an opportunity, um, and I jumped in. And, uh, I love running businesses. I love solving the puzzles. But by that time, and I sort of tell it in the book, I really wanted to play the long game. I wanted to build a brand. And, you know, the TAM, I l- I love your industry-

    18. DR

      [laughing]

    19. BG

      [laughing]

    20. JW

      The market in running, it's the biggest category in all of sporting goods. It's the biggest category in athletic footwear. It always has been.

    21. DR

      Yeah.

    22. JW

      It's about a thirty billion dollar category globally, apparel and footwear. So all we had to do is get a, you know... And we could survive, and we've just kept at it, um, by design, because I just decided I want to play the long game and build a brand, build value, and, and so that's why I'm still there. I'm a weird duck. [laughing]

    23. DR

      [laughing]

    24. BG

      [laughing]

    25. JW

      But I've, I've got- I've had four owners, and I've played through each one.... mm-hmm, um, and kept that opportunity out there for the next owner, and there we went.

  6. 12:32 – 14:12

    Why Brooks had “a little of everything”: factory logic, low margins, and inventory traps

    1. DR

      So at, at that moment, though, I mean, Ben mentioned you did a little this, a little that. It's like, uh, that line in Wayne's World about, like, "Oh, I've got a collection of hair nets and name tags." [laughing] Like, I mean, you were making football cleats. Like, what, what was Brooks at that point in time?

    2. JW

      So every brand in athletic footwear and apparel plays the whole, you know, athletic director's purview, right?

    3. DR

      Right.

    4. JW

      You're in every sport. And, and what no one understood, that I found out later, is that the mindset in our industry literally came from owning a factory.

    5. DR

      Mm.

    6. JW

      When you had a shoe factory, you had to keep it busy all year long and, and keep the people employed. So you went from baseball cleats to wrestling shoes-

    7. DR

      Mm.

    8. JW

      -to bowling shoes-

    9. DR

      Ah.

    10. JW

      -to running shoes, to foot... You know, every-- you had to make everything, and the business developed that way. They all-

    11. DR

      And, and you had to view it as, like, the product you made was, like, a factory that made shoes.

    12. JW

      Right.

    13. DR

      And so-

    14. JW

      And so most of it, we were losing money on.

    15. DR

      Mm.

    16. JW

      And that was the secret, right? So we had good, better, best: thirty dollar shoes, eighty dollar shoes-

    17. DR

      Mm

    18. JW

      ... and then performance running shoes that really started at, at that point about a hundred dollars. And then we had court shoes and family footwear. We called them barbecue shoes and lawnmower shoes 'cause that's what you did in them. [laughing]

    19. DR

      [laughing]

    20. BG

      [laughing]

    21. JW

      And, uh, and all of it was very low margin. All of it was tying up inventory and cash.

    22. BG

      Yep.

    23. JW

      And, um, the, the retailers were ambivalent about it 'cause we were number eight or nine at everything. Our brand was, was not strong. And so, but when we made the decision to burn the boats on everything but performance running, the industry had never seen that before, and, and most people thought we were crazy, that we wouldn't survive.

    24. BG

      And so you came in as CEO, I think, in two thousand and two, maybe late two thousand and one, but-

    25. JW

      April two thousand and one.

  7. 14:12 – 17:11

    Recapitalization, trust-building, and the early operating system for the turnaround

    1. BG

      Okay. Was Whitney looking for you to do the thing that you had done several times in your career before, which was just get the business to profitability? Or did they have a notion that you had an inkling that you could build a big, powerful brand here and actually build a tremendous growth business?

    2. JW

      Yep. Yep. By this time, you know, I understood what they needed, and, and I talk about it a little bit in my book. I, I'd run three, and I, I was a little bit smarter, fortunately. They had to liquefy. There was no question about it. They were gonna sell, and the employees knew that I was just coming in there to sell this thing. They had a pool on how long I'd last, but I wrote on my board one of my favorite quotes from Benjamin Disraeli: "The secret to success is constancy of purpose." I wanted to, I wanted to create value.

    3. BG

      Mm-hmm.

    4. JW

      I wanted to build a brand. So I decided when I walked in, I was gonna play through Whitney. I was gonna get them a good outcome, but I was gonna stay and play through it, and I thought we'd get another private equity player. We didn't, but... So the Whitney partners, um, Peter Cassam and Paul Pagano, I'll never forget the meetings. They said, "This thing is, it's kind of a mess. We didn't know what we bought. You have to pick a pla- path and go. It might take you five years, but you got to do it." And in Brooks' darkest hour, they wrote a check and recapitalized it. [audience clapping]

    5. BG

      Seven million dollars?

    6. JW

      A little bit of a cram down, but they, you know, they, they wrote a check, and that's when I came in, and so they were fantastic partners for Brooks.

    7. BG

      Mm.

    8. JW

      And we got them liquid. The, the pitch I made to our team, and, and it's what I believed, is that companies with issues get sold, companies with opportunity attract investors. And I said: "We're gonna have to park cars in the parking lot. We're gonna attract some of you." [laughing]

    9. DR

      [laughing]

    10. JW

      And, but that's, that's the mindset we had. We were gonna sell the future, not just sell the, the current, right?

    11. BG

      Yeah.

    12. JW

      Yeah.

    13. BG

      And so if I'm remembering right, Whitney put in seven million dollars.

    14. JW

      To recapitalize it.

    15. BG

      I think that's the last time Brooks has taken outside capital.

    16. JW

      Absolutely. So we, we saw a higher margin business.

    17. BG

      Yeah.

    18. JW

      Um, um, and we benchmarked against all the public companies. We're asset light. It's really an inventory and receivables business, um, and there's a reason we only have one store at our headquarters. Uh, and we think it's, it's an advantage for us right now in the development of our brand. But, um, if you have high margins and good flow through operating profits in the teens, um, and you're ir- incremental, obviously, capital, you can, you can flow cash growing twenty, thirty, forty percent. We haven't needed a dollar of capital since two thousand and one.

    19. BG

      Wow! [laughing]

    20. DR

      And that's incredible. Uh... [audience clapping]

    21. JW

      That's why, um, that's why Warren Buffett likes us. [laughing]

    22. BG

      [laughing] Right, you send-

    23. DR

      [laughing]

    24. BG

      ... you send cash to Omaha, not the other way around. [laughing]

    25. JW

      Our, our return on tangible net assets has been over fifty percent for the last fifteen years.

    26. DR

      Wow! Wow, fifty percent annually?

    27. JW

      Yeah.

    28. DR

      Wow.

    29. JW

      Yeah. On average, net tangible assets.

    30. DR

      What can, can- [laughing]

  8. 17:11 – 19:55

    Economics of running: consumables, loyalty, and “shoe count” as market truth

    1. DR

      I'd say that's a good business. Uh, can, can you just walk us through, like, what is... How do the economics of Brooks work?

    2. JW

      You know, I... Here, here was the insight that we saw, and, um, man, I... You know, monopolies are great, network effects are great, plat- you know, all those things are great, and what I saw in Brooks, there was a book that was, uh, meaningful to me when I was at Pillsbury, The PIMS Principles, and one of the highest ROI businesses were lower price point consumable items. If you're buying a Boeing jet or a six-hundred-dollar wake board that never wears out or an eight-hundred-dollar golf driver, you're-- that's a discerning purchase, and the margins on equipment tend to be lower. But the Titleist golf ball is a consumable, for me, anyway. [laughing]

    3. BG

      [laughing]

    4. DR

      [laughing]

    5. JW

      And, and running shoes-

    6. BG

      You've made that joke before

    7. JW

      ... for a frequent runner, a frequent runner will, will put twenty to thirty miles a week. They'll go through two point six pairs of shoes a year.

    8. BG

      Wow.

    9. JW

      So there's the stickiness, right? If you can earn a frequent runner that the shoe is really important, it's a piece of equipment for them, you can-- you don't have to resell them every time. You, you've got some stickiness there, and you start to build customer, um, customer loyalty, right?

    10. DR

      And your, your average selling price for a pair of shoes today is hundred and fifty-

    11. JW

      Hundred and thirty bucks.

    12. DR

      Hundred and thirty-

    13. JW

      Yeah.

    14. DR

      Times two point six-

    15. JW

      Yep

    16. DR

      ... per year, and a loyal Brooks customer stays with you for-

    17. JW

      Maybe... You know, we had to earn them. You know, there's no guarantee. They're curious, there's lots of new innovation, and they'll try some different things. But when you're training for a marathon, the, uh... One of my favorite stats for our brand is shoe count at marathons-

    18. BG

      [laughing]

    19. JW

      -because it's a piece of equipment.... and if, and if, uh, you don't wanna be injured, you wanna have a good experience. So we sponsor, Boston just happened, incredible race. We're always the number one or two on shoe on course. That's the punchline.

    20. DR

      And, and do you have people at the big marathons counting? [laughing]

    21. JW

      It's so good.

    22. DR

      [laughing]

    23. JW

      They have high-speed cameras. [laughing]

    24. BG

      [laughing]

    25. JW

      High sp-- no, high-speed cameras, AI, they link it to the bib. They can... They know exactly what shoe 20,000 people are running on.

    26. DR

      Oh.

    27. JW

      The model. It's so cool. So Houston Marathon, eight thou- 6,000 marathoners, 12,000 halves. Um, number one shoe in the half, Brooks. Number two shoe in the full, there was a little brand down in, um, Portland, Oregon.

    28. BG

      [laughing]

    29. DR

      Oh.

    30. JW

      They were number one. [laughing]

  9. 19:55 – 22:17

    Cutting channels and rebuilding through specialty run: losing revenue to gain the right customer

    1. BG

      ... it's 2002 through '06. Let's talk about this era. You've made this bet where you're gonna shed every other product that you sell-

    2. JW

      Yep

    3. BG

      ... and you're kinda gonna piss off a lot of your channel because, you know, what sells really well at these big box stores, those are your barbecue shoes. So can you take us to, like, one or two of the key moments of the hard part of the decision to drop product lines that weren't about frequent runners?

    4. JW

      Yeah, I think the, the key to Brooks is that we knew we are gonna have to build the brand at the runner level, literally a pair of feet at a time. And the retailers, so many retailers told me, "Jim, we are not gonna build your brand. We'll try it. We'll test it." We were tested at Dick's Sporting Goods, and I'm not kidding, for 10 years. 20 stores, 80 stores, 20 stores, 80 stores, 20... So, so you have to build the flywheel in these franchise products. That's how running works. The, the best-selling running shoes continue to be the best-selling running shoes year after year for as long as they sustain it all around the world.

    5. BG

      Mm.

    6. JW

      We have two of the best-selling shoes now in the United States, the Ghost and the Adrenaline. Um, they're the two top shoes in the performance running category. So, so when we go to retail, uh, biggest customer is Big 5. It's a fine, you know, sort of mid-priced sporting goods retailer on the West Coast. We were doing 10 million of 60 million of revenue with them at $30 shoes.

    7. DR

      Wow.

    8. JW

      My first meeting with them is, "We love Brooks. We see a great future for you." But we-

    9. BG

      So one sixth of all your revenue is coming from-

    10. JW

      Yeah

    11. BG

      ... their stores.

    12. JW

      But they, they saw our opportunity at $19.99. I was losing money at 30 bucks.

    13. DR

      That's correct.

    14. JW

      I couldn't run fast enough from that meeting because we left, and we generated 5 million of cash by getting the inventory out of it. So that... Those were easy decisions to leave those retailers, and then we had to build it in the specialty run community, pre-internet, pre-e-commerce. Um, huge part of our business now-

    15. BG

      And so they didn't-

    16. JW

      And then it was sporting goods.

    17. BG

      They didn't wanna sell your $100 shoes. They wanted to sell-

    18. JW

      They, they couldn't

    19. BG

      ... $20 to $30.

    20. JW

      They didn't have that customer. They didn't have the runner.

    21. BG

      I see.

    22. JW

      They had, they had family athletic footwear-

    23. DR

      W- where was-

    24. JW

      ... and price points

    25. DR

      ... at, at this moment in time, where was this in the r- running as a sport? Mar- like, marathons, Bikila-

    26. JW

      Yeah.

    27. DR

      Were they what they are today?

    28. JW

      Yeah.

    29. DR

      Were they on that journey, like?

  10. 22:17 – 35:09

    Brand positioning vs. “victory”: biomechanical focus, inclusivity, and Run Happy energy

    1. JW

      They were on that journey, and this was, this was what we did at Brooks. I think we were the first one to identify that the real business was in trainers. It wasn't in racing shoes, it wasn't in spikes, it wasn't in marathon racing shoes. The business is in the trainers. We don't sponsor college programs. They're kinda owned and wrapped up. A lot of the college athletes that race in the big brands train in Brooks- [laughing]

    2. BG

      [laughing]

    3. JW

      ... every day. The business is trainers. So when we came in, you know, I think Brooks had, had... You know, we were, we were humble, and we were getting the business that we could, and we had shoes that were really more back-of-the-pack people. They weren't the fast people. They were support shoes and motion control shoes, people that needed functional footwear. Um, and we've moved ourselves to the middle and the front. We're trying to serve every runner. The insight was this: the sport is the soul of running, right? Track and field, cross-country, road racing, the Olympics, now trail and ultra, but the business is people that are investing in themselves: fitness and health and wellness. There's no other sport that has that dynamic, where, where there's, there... It, it, it goes from a sport to, you know, a pursuit of, of investing in yourself.

    4. BG

      Mm-hmm.

    5. JW

      And we've always positioned right in the middle of that. We're basically about you and your run. We're not about the podium. We're not about the tape. You know, in our sport, unlike basketball, everybody knows, all the kids especially, know what Steph Curry plays in. Most people don't remember who won the Olympic marathon and, and even moreover, what shoe they were wearing.

    6. DR

      Mm-hmm.

    7. JW

      And the truth of the matter is, you know, everybody's unique, the shoe really matters, and you all know if it's comfortable, if it's working or it's not, and frequent runners really do. So that's the insight. I think we're the, we're the only brand that has consistently executed against that. Every product we make starts with your biomechanics, and your habitual joint motion, and what your needs are, and we're all essentially different. We're the only brand that begins there.

    8. BG

      Mm.

    9. DR

      Well, it's a-

    10. JW

      And we've done that for 20 years now.

    11. DR

      I mean, you mentioned, um, that other company in, in Oregon. [laughing]

    12. JW

      I try not to say competitors' names, right? [laughing]

    13. BG

      [laughing]

    14. JW

      It's, it just ends badly if you say a competitor's name.

    15. DR

      [laughing] Which is an amazing company down there, um-

    16. JW

      It's a great company

    17. DR

      ... but literally their name is, is the Greek word for victory.

    18. JW

      Yep.

    19. DR

      And what you're talking about here is incredibly counter-positioned to that in a way that victory really can't mean just investing in yourself, regardless of where you finish.

    20. JW

      One person breaks the tape.

    21. DR

      Yeah.

    22. JW

      40,000 people run New York Marathon. We'll take the 39,999- [laughing]

    23. BG

      [laughing]

    24. DR

      [laughing]

    25. JW

      ... that wanna have their best day. [laughing]

    26. BG

      [laughing]

    27. JW

      ... They're, you know, they're investing in themselves. They wanna have their-- We're, we are, we are celebrating every one of those people. First 5K, run around the block. Man, that's, that's your run, right? That's what we do.

    28. BG

      It was really clarifying reading your book and understanding that Brooks' brand is about performance, but it is not serious. And I think th- that was an interesting clarification for me because I run, and I take my performance seriously, and I've selected a very specific motion control Brooks shoe to do that. Um, but I don't need it to be a very serious, sort of like, uh, s- uh, victory-oriented brand 'cause I've never once thought, "Oh, maybe I will win the Seattle Rock 'n' Roll Marathon." [chuckles] Like, that has never occurred to me. [laughing]

    29. JW

      There's still hope, Ben. There's still hope. You know, I think, I think it... Really, what it relates to, and this is, I think, what Brooks got before any other brand, is you-- we have-- we are sweating product. I think we invest more in, in R&D in a focused running metrics manner than any other company, and we don't have m- as much money as many of them still. But it's so focused in the clinical work we do and the materials work we do. We engineer materials just for the motion of running and, and all the, all the engineering that it would have to do and, and, and respond in between gaits and all of that. So that's the key. But I think our brand positioning, um, I didn't create it. It was sort of there when I came in, but it's brilliant for this reason: it's approachable. You know, the unseriousness is basically trying to take the pretension and, and the, you know, the "I'm not worthy, I'm not a runner," out of our sport, and so many of our, our retail running shops have done a fantastic job of that. First of all, I'm old enough to remember Title IX in the '70s, equalized college sport funding for men and women. If you, if you weren't addressing women in the last forty years in sporting goods, you're gone. I mean, we doubled the business, and women have driven this sport, um, since the mid-'90s. So approachability, I think, was super key, and, and Brooks is a very inclusive brand. It's you and your run, and all are worthy. But the product... Here's the other thing that's so interesting about our sport is, you know, maybe in some sports, the pinnacle equipment absolutely needs to be, uh, available to the pinnacle athlete. You know, maybe that's in golf, and, and certainly for a two-hour marathon, everything has to be clicking. But what's interesting in our, in our sport, the person that really needs the best footwear and the best run bra and all of that are the people that are just beginning.

    30. BG

      Mm-hmm.

  11. 35:09 – 40:17

    Ownership transitions: Russell → Fruit of the Loom → Berkshire, and negotiating independence

    1. BG

      Okay, so let's fast-forward a couple of years. So you nail it with the Adrenaline four. You're starting... You're profitable now.

    2. JW

      Yeah.

    3. BG

      Um, the business is looking better. You get the liquidity event that you're looking for, and you're sold to Russell Athletic. What was it like communicating to the team, "We're joining Russell?"

    4. JW

      So you guys are in this business, and, and I've been bought and sold a few times, bought things too. We, um, we, we knew we were gonna have to sell, so we were prepared. And we thought for sure it was gonna be another private equity firm, we're gonna get another kick at the can. And that's what I was s- absolutely mentally prepared for. So the bankers come in, we do the management presentation. We're gonna practice on a strategic. There weren't many there.

    5. DR

      [laughing]

    6. JW

      We're gonna practice on Russell Athletic. [laughing]

    7. BG

      [laughing] Oh, everyone does a warm-up fundraising pitch?

    8. JW

      Oh, my God, and they completely fell in love with it.

    9. DR

      [laughing]

    10. JW

      So there we are.

    11. BG

      If only you had the, you know, YC's growth program that you could then go practice and- [laughing]

    12. JW

      And they ended up... We negotiated our independence. I pitched us, we're the crazy uncle out in Seattle, we're really different, just leave us alone, which they did. Um, but yeah, you know, so for them, we had negotiated our independence because we knew where we were going, we saw the opportunity, we were, we had great-- we had a flywheel going. We really did. And, and, uh, and at that point, we were continuing to pursue growth. So they, they would have been crazy not to just let us keep going, and, and I would do that then with the next owner as well.

    13. BG

      So two more years pass, business continues to grow, Russell gets bought by Fruit of the Loom-

    14. JW

      Mm-hmm

    15. BG

      ... and Fruit was already owned by Berkshire, right?

    16. JW

      Correct. That's right.

    17. BG

      So what's it like now being a subsidiary of a subsidiary, o-of Berkshire Hathaway, but two levels down?

    18. JW

      Yeah. I mean, I, i-it was really interesting. I... In one sense, you know, I'd gone to school on Warren through his letters, and, and I had an internship in the '80s that, uh, he had put, uh, a business out-... out of its misery, uh, in a competitive battle. In a two-newspaper town, it went to one.

    19. BG

      [laughing]

    20. DR

      Buffalo Evening News.

    21. JW

      And there was a bl- yeah, the Buffalo Evening News, and there was a black hole in Cowles Media's balance sheet. And I j-- what, what happened there? And Warren, oh, my gosh, plays to win, signals he will never, ever, ever, ever quit. Five million dollars of losses, investing in the newsroom, investing in quality, goes to the morning, fight to the death. Don't do that with Warren Buffett-

    22. BG

      [laughing]

    23. JW

      - 'cause he never quits!

    24. BG

      [laughing]

    25. JW

      So they made a rational decision, and they closed it down. His profits went from negative five to ten million every year since. And I was just, "Wow! Who is this guy?" Right? That-

    26. BG

      And that was, uh, that was before Salomon Brothers, right?

    27. JW

      Yeah, yeah, yeah.

    28. BG

      That was like the, that was like the prelude to Salomon.

    29. JW

      That was... Yeah, that was in his early days.

    30. BG

      Yeah.

  12. 40:17 – 45:03

    The Warren Buffett call: from Omaha shoe sales to being plucked into a standalone subsidiary

    1. BG

      You get to retain your independence there, but you're not really independent. You're still within Russell, with this, within Fruit. At some point, y- you get the cone-- the phone call from Warren. Can you talk us through that?

    2. JW

      Yeah, so we had put in... You know, we had good incentive programs, um, and we tried to s- keep people there and, and put some stickiness in with some long-term, uh, um, programs to just get people focused on building that triple. So, um, Fruit was, you know, sort of consolidating all their stuff, and they had, they had bought Russell for about a billion dollars with internal capital, and they were about to go and restructure that. So, you know, Warren had-- We had started to sell shoes at the annual meeting, Omaha. [laughing]

    3. BG

      [laughing]

    4. JW

      This is, like, Charlie and Warren, you know, fifty years ago.

    5. BG

      [chuckles]

    6. JW

      I love this event. Now, their arena was full, but that'll be the case for you guys- [laughing]

    7. BG

      [laughing]

    8. JW

      -in another year.

    9. BG

      They've had fifty years to compound, so-

    10. JW

      It's gonna be huge!

    11. DR

      That arena is way smaller. [chuckles]

    12. JW

      It's gonna be huge.

    13. DR

      [chuckles]

    14. JW

      But, you know, we were selling shoes there, and I sent Warren a note, and, "Great, next year, we'll sell more. Good job. You know, hearing great things. You guys are doing well. And by the way, if you're ever in Omaha, come by, we'll go have a steak." Well, son of a gun. [laughing]

    15. BG

      [laughing] You don't say no to that.

    16. DR

      [laughing]

    17. JW

      I just happened to be in Omaha about three weeks later. [laughing]

    18. BG

      Imagine that!

    19. JW

      And I knew he would love, uh, what we're building. It's unique, it's distinctive. We're not trying to be that brand, that brand. We're ch- you know, we're really developing something with focus. He couldn't figure out why the big guys weren't squashing us. And, uh, we spent three hours, not one phone call. Door was closed. We had, we had a meal. But you just get his undivided attention. His brain is just so focused. He loves business. And, and, uh, I did most of the talking 'cause I thought, "He's gonna fall in love with this business." And six months later, um, he, I-- So the, here, here's the start of the story is, it was the f- December when Mark Zuckerberg was preparing to take Facebook public. And there was a Wall Street Journal article for the new, I don't know if he was twenty-two or twenty-three, the, a young CEO of a public company. And one of the lines in there, he was gonna trade in his Adidas slides for a pair of Brooks Adrenaline. I don't know why it was in there, but Warren saw it, circled it, and said, "Jim, this is great. We just need a couple million more." [laughing]

    20. BG

      [laughing]

    21. JW

      So two weeks later-

    22. BG

      Wait, did, did you send Zuck a pair?

    23. JW

      Oh, yes. [laughing]

    24. BG

      [laughing]

    25. DR

      [chuckles]

    26. JW

      Yeah. And he was in, uh, he was in Brooks for a while.

    27. BG

      Right. [chuckles]

    28. JW

      So but two weeks later, I'm with my family down in the desert, and, uh, you know, I, I think I was out of BlackBerry, but it's two thousand and eleven. I didn't have my, my voicemails coming into my phone. So I was checking email every day, but I wasn't, I didn't check voicemail.

    29. DR

      Yeah.

    30. JW

      So I get back at my d- my office, January second. I'm in early. I like to start the new year, especially, early. It's seven AM, and the red light on the phone is blinking. Ah, pick it up, uh, answer it. "Jim, this is Warren. I got an idea. Give me a call." It was five days old.

  13. 45:03 – 49:38

    Guerrilla marketing at the Olympic Trials: the Run Happy plane and getting kicked out

    1. BG

      Business has grown nicely, you're profitable. Um, there's a fun story from twenty twelve that I'd like you to tell. Uh, you've always been somewhat of a scrappy company, uh, doing more with less than anyone else. Can you share the story of when you personally got kicked out of the US Track and Field Olympic trials? [laughing]

    2. DR

      [laughing]

    3. JW

      So I think in, in real life, digital is digital, but in real-life marketing, um, we activate, right? A lot of the running shops do runs out of their stores, and they're involved with the five Ks, and, you know, we're bringing energy and, and positivity to that, really trying to make it fun for other people, and many that are running for the first time. And then there's the sport, which is so fun, um, to be at, whether it's the Olympic trials for the marathon or the Olympic trials, which is often at, at Hayward Field down in Eugene. Um, and the challenge there for all the brands is we rent a house, we bring in all of our partners and VIPs, we run, uh, group runs out of the house every morning, we bring in a chef, and we watch these incredibly athletes, athletes compete for Team USA. It always happens in June. Olympics are, you know, July, August. And, and it's just a fabulous event. Um, and then the backdrop is the largest brand in our space, Nike, uh, signs a twenty-seven-year marketing agreement with the governing body of our sport, USA Track and Field. Who does a twenty-seven-year deal?

    4. BG

      [laughing]

    5. DR

      [laughing]

    6. JW

      I mean, come on! It, it's a twenty-seven-year deal. And then, of course, you know, University of Oregon is a, is a Nike university in more ways than one, and so they wrap it up, right? The whole thing has got swoosh wrap around everything. I, I think, I think the yellow lines on the highway are swooshes.

    7. BG

      [laughing]

    8. DR

      [laughing]

    9. JW

      So we, we wanted to celebrate the athletes. We really-- We have athletes in there. We invest in the sport, and, you know, we don't invest like they do, but we invest in athletes, and they're inspiring and so on and so forth. All the brands do. So, you know, what can you do? You can't do a lot. Um, but we decided, uh... We did-- We checked with the FAA. The air rights are open.

    10. BG

      [laughing]

    11. JW

      Nobody said you can't fly a plane. And we put a Run Happy banner on an airplane, and we just flew it around that stadium-

    12. BG

      [laughing]

    13. DR

      [laughing] [clapping]

    14. JW

      -all day on Friday. [clapping] They got mad, and we did it again on Saturday, and they started to tell us, "You gotta take that plane down." "Why?" "Well, because you can't do guerrilla marketing." "Yeah, but we checked. It's all-- You know, the FAA is fine. It's all good. It's the sky."

    15. BG

      [laughing]

    16. DR

      [laughing]

    17. JW

      "And we're cheering on the athletes." "You can't. You gotta take that thing down. Get that thing out of the sky!" And, and so overnight, coming into Sunday, the final day, we had-- we checked with some of the, uh, track and field officials, and they basically said: "Screw 'em, you should just fly it."

    18. BG

      [laughing]

    19. JW

      And we checked again with the FAA, and so we flew it, and they came up... We bought tickets for all of our guests. We had about eighty people there. We didn't get them free and comped. We had some of those, but we bought all these. And they said, "All right, you guys all have to leave." And we, "What?" "No, y'all have to leave." So we left our, our guests, and three of us, um, went down to talk about it, and they... "Why are you asking us to leave? You, you didn't do the-- You know, you, you didn't take it down. We asked you to take it down," and Nike was all sitting right behind him. So, well, there's nothing against doing that. We don't-- We, we checked with everyone. "Well, read the back of your ticket. This ticket is a license that can be revoked at any time." "So you're just kicking us out?" "Yeah, we're just kicking you out.

    20. DR

      [laughing]

    21. JW

      Get out." And it was all... It was a huge mistake for them because this story has lived on in the industry forever, and we had some of the best running shop people in, in the country there with us. They were our guests, and so everybody knew about it. They kicked me out, our head of marketing, and our head of, uh, sports marketing. It was, it was interesting. Anyway-

    22. BG

      [laughing]

    23. DR

      That's awesome. [clapping]

    24. JW

      We, uh... [clapping] We were at the bar, we had beers, and we watched it on TV. [laughing]

    25. BG

      Well, uh, if, if we were- if David and I were on Zoom with you, w-we would be getting ready to enter, like, hour number two and try and talk about every year all the way through.

    26. JW

      Yeah.

    27. BG

      Uh, I... Tonight, I wanna focus on how you came through the pandemic and some of the unique ways that-... you early realized running actually was going to be something that people started focusing more time on, and you were able to-

    28. JW

      Yeah

  14. 49:38 – 54:29

    COVID playbook: runner obsession, Strava + field counts, digital shift, and supply chain timing

    1. BG

      - kind of lean into this new behavior. Talk to us about March twenty twenty, and how you paid attention to what was changing.

    2. JW

      Yeah, a couple of big advantages. First was literally an obsession on runners. Participation, you know, links to unit sales and volume, right? So no other brand has that clarity because most of the products in the athletic footwear industry don't ever go for a run or play basketball or really even go to the gym. It's, it's casual family lifestyle footwear. Um, there's nothing wrong with that. Those- some of those businesses are great, but we, we had an advantage because ninety percent of our products went through a retailer. That's a problem. Europe retail shut down in one week, and then all of retail rolled through North America, and, and, and by the end of March, not a store was really open. And that's a problem. Cash cycle froze. Oh, my God, nobody knew what was happening, right? We didn't know how lethal this virus was, how transmissible, and so on and so forth. And so it was white-knuckle time, and we were there with everybody else. Everybody could write a book on that. But here's what we did, is we saw phases, 'cause we'd seen during the recession, running is a bit recession-resistant. We saw that in the great recession.

    3. SP

      I was thinking about that. It's kind of like-

    4. JW

      It, it, it is 'cause it's cheap and it's convenient. All you need is, right, a pair of shoes.

    5. SP

      It's like the healthy alcohol during recessions. [laughing]

    6. JW

      In the Great Recession-- Thank you.

    7. BG

      [laughing]

    8. JW

      But we were not an essential business, and, and marijuana and alcohol were-

    9. SP

      [laughing]

    10. JW

      - so figure that out. [laughing] Um, so, but during the Great Recession, fifty percent unemployment in Italy and Spain under the age of thirty, running took off. Double-digit growth after the Great Recession. So we, we see- we'd seen that before, and it turned out to be COVID-friendly, right? You, you, you now know the story. It was, it was, you know, social distancing friendly, outdoors, walking, hiking, running, all made the cut. But nobody knew that. We had a hypothesis. We created this frame on, on how we thought running would recover, and so here's what we did. First of all, Strava data magic, right?

    11. SP

      Mm.

    12. JW

      Every day after the, the quarantine shutdowns, Strava activity was growing, and they were sharing that. Then, you know, what we did, we have forty, in the US alone, forty-five field marketing people. We put them in parks, high-traffic running parks, at four PM every afternoon, and they counted runners, and guess what? It was growing every day. And then we watched digital sales, and we have visibility on eighty-five percent of our retail sell-through. And so digital went from thirty percent of all of our products going through a website of somebody's, ours or another partner's, it went to eighty percent by the f- by the end of April, and in May, we sold more in May twenty twenty, almost all through digital, than we did in May nineteen.

    13. SP

      In all channels.

    14. JW

      Running made the cut. We grew twenty-seven percent in twenty twenty, in that, that COVID year, but we saw it. This was the key because of our customer obsession and our ability to, you know, work multi-channel was a big advantage in that time 'cause we could move inventory around and, and make it happen. Inventory, if it isn't there, you can't sell it. So but, but multi-channel was a big advantage. The other, uh, was our, our focus on the runner. Um, we turned our supply chain on at least six to twelve weeks before anybody else did. 'Cause if you were, if you were a broad-based retailer, there was no clarity on when the customer was coming back, and for a lifestyle product, nobody, you know, nobody went outside for a year. So-

    15. BG

      Oh, so it was the fact that you exclusively made performance running gear that gave you the confidence to flip it back on. 'Cause if you're making all kinds of stuff in your factory-

    16. JW

      Yeah

    17. BG

      - and you're pushing all kinds of stuff through retail channels-

    18. JW

      Yeah

    19. BG

      ... most of it is not going to sell, so you can't actually open.

    20. JW

      That's right. In apparel and footwear, inventory is life and death. You've got to manage inventory well because if you have too much, you, you ruin the next cycle of, of inline product. So inventory is, is really critical, but we, we managed and, and played that cycle really well. We grew twenty-seven percent in twenty twenty. We grew thirty-one percent in twenty-one.

    21. BG

      Yep.

    22. SP

      Wow.

    23. JW

      Um, and we would have been up forty if not for supply chain.

    24. BG

      Wow! So what'd you do in revenue last year?

    25. JW

      Sorry?

    26. BG

      What'd you end up doing in revenue last year?

    27. JW

      One point one three billion.

    28. SP

      Um...

    29. JW

      One billion and one thirty, yeah.

    30. SP

      Wow.

  15. 54:29 – 1:04:37

    Moats and the future: retail partnerships, digital engagement, global ambition, and supply-chain resilience

    1. BG

      So normally, we talk about seven powers, as we drift into analysis here. You're a Berkshire business, so we're gonna talk about moats.

    2. JW

      Okay.

    3. BG

      W- what is Brooks' moat, and how do you think about defending the castle now that you have what you've built?

    4. JW

      You know, we think a lot about it, and I, I think there's also, uh, something I'd add to that. Part of the moat can be business model, right? Business models can be really powerful, and one of the things you can do, uh, as a company, um, to create, uh, defensive, you know, m- moat structures [chuckles] is, is business model execution at scale. So we now are executing retail partnerships with the best retailers for running gear to runners at Super Jack and Jill in Seattle, um, Fleet Feet Running down in, I think, Menlo Park. Um, obviously, you know, some of the better sporting goods players in outdoor, from REI to Dick's Sporting Goods, we're their number one brand.... We've earned that over twenty years, and we have deep, broad partnership programs with them. Digital marketing, consumer journey, you know, runners are digitally savvy. They're, they're, they're obviously all over the web. They start their shopping experience there. Um, we're-- we reach them in active evaluation mode. Once you start looking at shoes, if you don't see our ad, you know, I don't know how we missed you. We've-- we're spending a lot of money at runners now, and maybe, maybe more money at run-- at people who run in active evaluation for running shoes than any other brand. Very focused. That's not easy to do in our industry at scale. And then, but I, I would say this is our moat, you know. I think, I think run ability, fit, feel, and ride, there's a lot of good shoes out there. It's actually not easy to make a great shoe. And Anthony Fauci made a joke about shoes: "Vaccines are tough, they're complicated. It's not like making shoes." [laughing]

    5. DR

      [laughing]

    6. JW

      We get a lot of that.

    7. DR

      [laughing]

    8. JW

      But, um, you know, the refinement that goes into mile, in making mile twenty-six, you know, acceptable, you know, the-- these are-- i- is, is really big. So, so, you know, I think great product is not as common as it, as you might think, and, uh, the people on the inside, the frequent runners, know. So I think product, you've always got to lead with product. That's the first brand experience is a product experience. So, so I think we do some hard things. We, we build great product consistently, year in, year out. It fits and it rides well. Um, and then what we do on the retail side in partnering and activating in real life, running and, and, and selling shoes in real life, events and all the like, we do that better than anybody else. Service them, deliver on time, complete. And then the digital piece, we're excited about it. I mean, we're, you know, we're still just getting started there, but, um, we're really focused on it.

    9. DR

      Yeah, I'm, I'm curious. I mean, you mentioned... I hadn't even thought about Strava-

    10. JW

      Yeah

    11. DR

      ... and the amount of data that you're able-

    12. JW

      Yeah

    13. DR

      ... to see from that. What is-- what does the digital side of running in the future look like for-

    14. JW

      Yeah

    15. DR

      ... for Brooks and for the industry?

    16. JW

      I, I think, um, it's interesting because quantified self and those tools have been ubiquitous, and, and, and they're out there, and, and the Apple Watch is a, is a damn great product, right? So, you know, what's interesting about that is both Under Armour and ASICS have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on digital apps.

    17. DR

      Yep.

    18. JW

      Um, and I, I think they've really struggled to monetize.

    19. DR

      There's, uh, um-

    20. JW

      MapMyRun.

    21. DR

      Runkeeper and MapMyRun, both.

    22. JW

      And Runkeeper.

    23. DR

      Yeah.

    24. JW

      Exactly. So I wanted to buy every one of those-

    25. DR

      [chuckles]

    26. JW

      - and Warren wanted me to do the multiple on EBITDA, [laughing] and there was no EBITDA.

    27. DR

      [laughing]

    28. JW

      So let's just say it's hard to do acquisitions.

    29. DR

      One, at least one of them was a completely free product, I think, right?

    30. JW

      Oh, man, they don't make money.

  16. 1:04:37 – 1:08:24

    Personal closing: beating esophageal cancer and redefining perspective on life and leadership

    1. BG

      All right, one closing topic: You battled and survived and beat cancer while building this incredible business. How has that changed your perspective on leading, on the way you spend your days, and on life broadly?

    2. JW

      Let's close it on a light note- [laughing]

    3. DR

      [laughing]

    4. JW

      -with some cancer.

    5. BG

      [laughing]

    6. JW

      Let's talk about cancer.

    7. DR

      [laughing]

    8. JW

      That's the takeaway for these wonderful people. So, you know, it... I didn't expect it, came out of nowhere, unlucky, no, you know, "How did this happen?" Esophageal cancer, I just felt awful, and I, w- my running, worst running experience as I've ever had, and I got the diagnosis. Chemo, radiation, surgery, complications in the surgery, another surgery, um, and but I-- but the good news is I'm cancer-free. I think it's gone. I think it's out of my body. [clapping] Um, the bad news is I'm, I'm even slower, and, and I'm kind of a Frankenstein in my systems, but it works. Everything works.

    9. BG

      [laughing]

    10. JW

      Um, so I think what I learned from that, though, um, is that, you know, you're-- y- you go to the web... I go, every time I have a friend or a family member gets cancer, I go to the web, and you look at it and understand it and what the treatments are, and they always give you a five-year survival rate. My five-year survival rate was twenty percent, one in five, and my five years is this November, so I'm gonna kick its butt. [laughing]

    11. DR

      [laughing] Woo!

    12. JW

      But, but I think what, what I quickly figured out, and I talked it through, you know, with my family and, and obviously with, uh, with Warren, frankly, is that, you know, I decided that I was doing exactly what I wanted to be doing. I love what I'm doing. I, I've got family, I've got active lifestyle, I've got this fabulous brand and company that I'm a part of and a team. I just love it. I don't, I don't know what else I'd do, which is a problem, but... So I decided I didn't wanna live, I didn't wanna live in fear, I didn't wanna live every day thinking about what I had to lose. I had a lot to lose. Um, and I didn't wanna be bitter about, "Why me?" You know, I just decided I wanna soak in everything I can on any given day. I wanna be a CEO, I wanna be a dad, I wanna be a husband, I wanna, you know, I wanna be a, a papa. I've got four grandkids. So, so that was it, and I think for me, that was really powerful because, um, I, I don't wanna be that cancer guy, and they brought it up.

    13. BG

      [laughing]

    14. JW

      They brought it up. [laughing] But I, that's just not my thing. I, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna s-- I, I'm glad to talk about it. I don't hide it, and I, and I've learned a lot, but, um, you know, I wanna, I wanna enjoy the things in life I really enjoy. So that's what I learned, but I think it's, you know, it, everybody's different, and you do find out, companies, when you hit challenges, you learn what you're really all about, and I think it's the same for people, of course. And, and so I feel really lucky 'cause I'm doing what I wanna do, and, uh, cancer's in the rearview mirror. So... [clapping]

    15. DR

      Well...

    16. JW

      It's good.

    17. DR

      ... [audience applauding] So great.

    18. BG

      Well, I know Jim did not, uh, want us to end on that note, but I think that's what we're gonna leave it on. [chuckles]

    19. DR

      I think that's a perfect spot to end. [laughing] Ah, Jim.

    20. DR

      Let's go for a run! [laughing]

    21. DR

      [chuckles] Thank you so much.

    22. DR

      Thanks, guys.

    23. DR

      This has been so wonderful. Thank you for making this whole day a great-

    24. BG

      So special

    25. DR

      ... experience and special for us.

    26. DR

      It's great to be a part of it.

    27. BG

      Thanks for all of you who came on the run this morning. That was super fun.

    28. DR

      Yeah. [audience applauding] [chuckles] All right.

    29. BG

      All right, Jim.

    30. DR

      All right.

  17. 1:08:24 – 1:10:55

    Arena show wrap: gratitude, community energy, and proof-of-attendance NFT

    1. BG

      Well, listeners, that was our Arena show. We're so pumped to get to share it with you for all those of you who can't travel to Seattle, and that was on reasonably short notice. I think it was a month or so. But, boy, did the folks at, uh, at PitchBook, and Vouch, and Vanta, and everyone else who helped us make this happen, Brooks Running with the run the morning before the show.

    2. DR

      Packy, Mario, Anu, Shu, Y Combinator. I just... There was, God, so much love. So many of our past guests just came in to come to the show. It was so, so cool.

    3. BG

      Yeah, that was great, hanging with Chenyi and John Bathgate and... So, listeners, hopefully we'll be able to do something like this in the future and, and have you there.

    4. DR

      I think we gotta do the Chase Center next. We gotta bring this to San Francisco.

    5. BG

      That's really the only option. [chuckles]

    6. DR

      Where do we go from here, right? That's the only logical place.

    7. BG

      It felt like Berkshire weekend for Acquired podcast nerds, and we would never, you know, profess that we're at the same scale, but it, it definitely felt like it had an energy of, uh, to quote crypto, of "we're all gonna make it." I don't know. I got all the warm and fuzzies from getting to hang out with everyone.

    8. DR

      You all are just the best.

    9. BG

      I also think, David, of the, like, thousand people in that arena, I think you and I personally got to talk with about 500. Like, we were on a mission to make sure to meet as many people as possible.

    10. DR

      Before the show, after the show, at the after-party. That was so cool. Oh, man, it was so much fun.

    11. BG

      And everybody who came is getting an NFT, a custom Acquired proof of attendance NFT, thanks to Acquired's Head of Special Projects, Sunny Kim, and the Solana Foundation. So for those of you who came, show it off when you get your cool, animating... Well, I won't give away too much, but, yes, your proof of attendance NFT.

    12. DR

      Yes, so fun.

    13. BG

      Well, with that, we wanna thank, of course, the folks at PitchBook for doing this with us, uh, to Vanta, Vouch, and the SoftBank Latin America Fund. We would love if you wanna come and, uh, chat with us, acquired.fm/slack. You can find your next job at acquired.fm/jobs. I think that's all we have to say. Listeners, we'll see you next time.

    14. DR

      We'll see you next time.

    15. SP

      Who got the truth? Is it you? Is it you? Is it you? Who got the truth now? Huh! [upbeat music]

Episode duration: 1:10:55

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